Shopping-Basket Height
Hey Yeller! Catch! They'd flick us packs of gum
as we raced along the towpath of the Ship Canal
and those noisy crew-cut men with nasal accents
glided past. Threw me some too, but not so often,
and though I savoured this new taste, chewed on
beyond its sourness until it wouldn't stretch,
I thought it might be disloyal to wave back.
Hitler was easy, he was wicked, Goebbels, too,
Himmler, Goering, throat-hurting names to say,
but these Yanks from unlikely sounding places
- Alabama, Chatanooga, Tallahassee, Tennessee -
they were on our side Dad said. Yet Mr Lawless
declared you couldn't trust them, as the blade
of his bacon-slicer inched towards the pinkness
of his palm, and all the women shook their heads
and nodded, except for Mrs Preece, who dropped
her coupon book, stumbled out into the street,
Mrs Job thanked God the stench had gone away,
Mrs Bickerstaff said it was not for us to judge
especially if our men were missing presumed dead
and Mrs Job snapped back that if they were ready
to be blown to bits for us, the least we could do
was keep our ankles closed, and Mr Lawless said
Now ladies, my mother frowned and whispered
I mustn't listen to grown-up talk, and Yeller's
mother was frowning at her too, and we looked
at each other from our secret playground below
shopping-basket height, that was the first time
she ever smiled at me, ever noticed me, though
I could remember the day she started school,
she was three, straw-haired and pencil-legged,
clutching a bottle stained with currant juice,
her weekly allocation from the Food Office,
and sunlight on her pigtails made me swallow.
That was sixty years ago. She's not skinny now,
it's not fruit-juice in the bottle always hidden
in her coat, our child-filled years together
have long since ebbed away, but if we meet
she still flashes me the same complicit smile,
and her hair, for that moment, glistens yellow.
