Loaves And Fishes (Poetry)

On weekly visits, I would watch her knead and roll
out pastry — that so-punished death-white dough
the colour and the texture of her hands
much the same as the mixture in her bowl.
Her rough working-woman’s skin smoothed red to pale
by the super-sifted flour claimed refined.

Capable but cheerful-sloppy how she cooked
and fed us all — any visitors who came.
She’d cater for an army — peel and slice
a mountainslide of chips. Whisk round and beat
eye-measured batter thin to lump-free thick
then grab a tail to coat cold headless fish.

She couldn’t read or write but she could bake.
And that she did — at work, at home, in dreams
of kitchens where she queened it over all
gave orders, didn’t take them, stirred at whim
the bubbling saucepans in long shiny rows
and served up banquets past imagining.

*****

She died near Christmas thirty years ago.
All shrunk away to yellow skin and bone.
Cold shop-bought pies complete anathema
her crusted oven long-abandoned for
the TV’s easy chair and meals on wheels.
Few knocking on her ‘café-closed’ front door.