At Grandma’s
While I mow her unit’s lawns,
Grandma bakes fruit scones.
(This was the push-mower-
with-grass-catcher era.)
I bike here from school
to her back shed - not a tool
in it beside the mower
and rusting hedge-clippers.
She’d moved here, widowed,
from a two-bedroom ‘State
house’ when Granddad died.
What a great send-off he’d had -
pall-bearers from Parliament,
a Maori MP in chief’s cloak.
I wasn’t there - merely Dad, only
son, with his two sisters. They
minded Grandma, helped her
move along the tram route further,
maybe three or four stops
from our doctor and shops.
She sings hymns, old favourites,
'The Lord’s My Shepherd'
is one I know. 'The Methodist
Hymn Book' eked out with
diddley-diddley-dee. Once
Grandpa sang 'Silver Threads
among the Gold', and she’d
joined in. Now we heard Dad
sing it teasingly for Mum,
without her help. No voice,
she’d say. Aunt Verna was
the singer, a true soprano.
‘Don’t you go to church now, Grandma?’
‘Just weddings and funerals, my dear.’
Auckland’s warm rains
make grass grow year-round.
Moist cut grass fragrant to the nose,
heaped now under hydrangeas;
sweltering in the far corner.
My drink and buttered scone
downed, it’s back to the mower.
Alone in the kitchenette
Grandma is singing 'Safe in my
Father’s home' to the framed portrait
of Michael Joseph Savage,
saviour of the country,
first Labour Prime Minister -
‘applied Christianity’.
As her late husband’s grandson -
indeed, the only one -
I shall have to fill big boots -
meanwhile wage war on green shoots.
‘I’ll need you again soon.’
I hold out my palm - small coins -
she folds my fingers over
to prevent my counting until
out her door and biking home.
Rainclouds fill the sky beyond town.
[Auckland 1951 / Seattle 2015]
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