Snap: Mavis
On the tenth day before Christmas
I said to my true love
Today I will phone Mavis
and get her off my conscience.
Ten years Mavis was our neighbour,
before she moved (alone cancer just then
taking her husband, faithful Baptist,
elsewhere,) Mavis, to a unitı called
a villa, in the fancy Retirement Village.
We too moved soon after,
to spacious Doncaster, and
we really must have Mavis roundı.
Before her Christmas card came,
I phoned and said Iıd visit.
Her voice preceded her to her front door.
You canıt see me through this new wire.ı
She let me in, I pecked her cheek;
it was easy to say You havenıt changed.
We settled so her good ear
was leaning my way; I
approved my glass of ginger beer,
and had to say: You could be
one of my late motherıs sisters.
I guess your family and mine come
from the same North British gene pool,
liable to sunburn and melanoma.
That got her started: cancer
in others, and avoiding it
(she and I) made a strong theme.
(Stay indoors, take Vitamin D.)
Updates next on all her family;
photos Iıd not seen till now brought in
her parents, long dead, sitting on a bench
Father himself had made, in the hills.
I might have mentioned my children
could I have got a word in.
My wife and dogs get brief consideration.
Weıll have her round after Christmas.
Before I go I step into her tiny yard.
Thereıs the fuchsia and the daphne
from the old place, thriving.
What can be eating these holes
in the geranium leaves?
But the snake! At my feet. Oh
itıs only a rubber one, we put it high
up there to scare the birds from nesting there.
Itıs fallen down. A tall person like you
can easily slip it back up there.
Max Richards
Doncaster, Victoria
Wednesday 19 December 2007
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