Austerity
I worked today
in green cargo shorts
cutting grass
in the orchard
Thoughts turned
to boyhood
and wearing short trousers
and chilblains
you never hear
of them these days
Or the blistering
pain of cold hands
fingers and feet
coming home
and sitting
with bowls
of warmed water.
Winters of such coldness
of fogs and days
of endless rain
and taking turns
hanging coats
near a coke stove
in the school room
and then snows
that fell in heaps
and weeks
of blackened
uneatable
vegetables
and crops frozen
in fields.
Good old days.
.
RAC
