Humour Me
 
Once it was Jo and me, giddy with giggles at some 7-year olds’ silliness,
deaf to Your father’s waiting, until my own dad scooped
her up and bore downstairs wriggling like a puppy.
 
Even mum and me, black humour, bitter as dark chocolate.
At times, our fear fermenting into hysteria, laughing in cancer’s face,
because there’s daring in your last chip being death.
 
But now, it’s the anecdote with the damp punchline,
that nonetheless recalls my own high wire attempts
at humour, so manage a token smile and Oh how funny.
 
Or worse, the waste of a corker, when my laughter is frozen beneath
wintry thoughts, and cannot enjoy with the lip-smacking savour
it deserves, so false laughter must be forced out as if barbed.
 
But sometimes the gift of a middle-aged meet up with best mate,
combustion of coffee and cake, setting off blasts of laughter,
that raises eyebrows from more proper tables.
 
Or your grudge against our hoover, revealed in Billy Connolly 
skit, demonstrating its wilful clutching at furniture, whilst smirking
at you with that bloody stupid face, that has me bellowing-
 
And looking at nana and her work mates in fading sepia squares
that cannot dim their fun, as cutting brussels with frost-burnt fingers
or stripped to bras in ‘strawberrying’ swelter, 
 
their weather-proof spirits still managed to steal some time for larking –
and decide in my 60th year, that I would like to receive her post-dated gift,
a ready supply of real laughter, that will see me out -

Fiona Sinclair

If you have any thoughts on this poem,  Fiona Sinclair would be pleased to hear them.