Triangulation

My mother was the daughter of shop-workers;
her father died at the end of the first war
when she was barely three.  My father’s family
did whatever they could to keep themselves
respectably poor.  He left school at ten
to be apprenticed, she at fourteen to work
in a factory making batteries.  And here I sit,
staring at the bright screen of my laptop,
trying to decide that being a poet’s important.

Ken Head

If you have any comments on this poem, Ken Head  would be pleased to hear them.