Three Scores & Tea

Elfin Stevie, flame-haired naïf,
frocks and socks at forty-odd,
stamping her iambic feet,
casting spells to filibuster Time
who shrugs Its shoulders, admits defeat,
lets her off all-tainting certainty
blanching the couch in the bay window glare.

Death comes even to suburbia.
Aspidistras wilt like shadow spinsters.
Doily wills curbed by window-sills
turn in on themselves for three scores and tea
in Aunt Lion’s best-china-rattling tray –
one lump or two to spirit her away.

Poor jilted Freddy, cup-sipping pity,
might have patched one flesh together
had she pinched her nose,
held her breath
but as wife she’d very little to offer
but bitter wit and junket;
an infantile infatuation with Death;
besides, her typist’s fingertips
were only prone to wander keys.

Shelf-in Stevie, faded old maid,
her life, one long settee sit-in
on timeless catnapper, cigarette-
-singe verses to stimulate her mind
deeply morbid in the thundery gloom
of static parlour, crochet dull –
she’d have believed in God had He
not been a vengeful, damning one
but she could never reconcile
the Christian Doctrine of Eternal Hull.

Alan Morrison

If you've any comment on his poem, Alan Morrison would be pleased to hear from you.