At Grandfather’s - Richard Fleming

Along the entry he would come caterwauling,
striking bin-lids with his stick,
through the backyard knocking over milk bottles.

Up the wooden stair, rolling like a tar,
to lifeboat-bed and disapproval:
his salty, mermaid wife growling like an ocean.

On Sunday mornings there, we children crouched,
like mice, digesting toast and catechisms,
as grandma stepped, stiff-backed, around him.

He would be still as stone, his bowl of porridge cooling.

Richard Fleming
This poem appears in Richard’s second poetry collection, Strange Journey.

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