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Phili pa Dancing There’s no one else there, only the radio and the cat comfortable between the pot plants. No one is telling her to be careful on the stairs, to remember her stick, to sit down and they’ll bring her a cup of tea. The kitchen is astir with the sun that gleams into corners. It polishes the toes of her slippers as she jigs from table to sink, from sink to dresser, tea towel across her shoulder a bandolier declaring her independence. She knows that if they were spying on her through the corner window they would think her reliving the dance hall nights of her youth, but she is seizing today in a jubilation of steps. 108
page 117
Parasol We four sat round the table talking. Above us your parasol staved off the sun’s extreme, but all the same a breeze let it keep up a commentary, ruffling the canvas top as though to say That’s what you think but there’s another way. We sketched a plan, cautiously looked ahead – in a few weeks maybe we’d meet again. Yet maybe then we’d be confined to home once more and there would be no chance for face-to-face even in your garden or an open space. We’d been discussing divine and mortal knowledge. Did bees ever forget which were their hives? Could Jesus when a man foresee our lives? Could we predict our children’s futures, who they would become, from their first years? Or even hope to see some ten years on, how sad or happy we ourselves would be? The garden blossomed round us and the bees toiled on, quite certain about what they did to raise the generation which they fed. Without their confidence, we hesitated over our plans. How certain are the stats which science or sociology foretell? Lord knows said the parasol. 109

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Phili pa Dancing

There’s no one else there, only the radio and the cat comfortable between the pot plants. No one is telling her to be careful on the stairs, to remember her stick, to sit down and they’ll bring her a cup of tea. The kitchen is astir with the sun that gleams into corners. It polishes the toes of her slippers as she jigs from table to sink, from sink to dresser, tea towel across her shoulder a bandolier declaring her independence. She knows that if they were spying on her through the corner window they would think her reliving the dance hall nights of her youth, but she is seizing today in a jubilation of steps.

108

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