The Welsh Hippy
 
                       

 
Emerging from my cupboard of grief,
I shared her canvas and Sharpie pens.
My emotions pressed their colours onto paper,
it was a new taste, like her Welsh Cakes.
I saw the crumbs left by her loveless mother.
She survived to become a loving mother
to an equally loveless son.
 
She was born with an extra chromosome
and its hands would do the devil’s work,
holding her feet to the fire all her life.
It burned a hole for cancer to crawl inside
and make a permanent home.
She survived to celebrate by tattooing
her mastectomied breasts.
 
She couldn’t eat and she couldn’t drink
but that Boxing Day hospital visit
was a laughter of poses for the camera:
walking in the air without the Snowman,
dancing a striped pyjama “Funky Chicken”
and Kojaking for my who loves you baby?
while sucking a wet sponge on a stick.
 
Just let me go home to my cats.
It was a hell before a well-deserved heaven.
Their Nana Jan was my Superwoman,
for whom enough was never too much
until the motorbike funeral procession,
no request for her friend’s flowers and
all her money finally in his hands.

If you have any thoughts about this poem,  Susan Wilson would be pleased to hear them