SURVIVORS

I started writing in my teens, grew up and scrapped the lot. Restarted in my mid-twenties then lost much of my output in a fire during the early days of the IRA terror campaign in Ulster, often referred to euphemistically as 'The Troubles'. 

Neither loss was particularly upsetting because much of my early poetry or prose was, in my view, embarrassingly bad. Only a few scribblings from those former days managed to survive and were rewritten to a greater or lesser degree. One of these 'survivors' appears below.

AT GRANDFATHER’S

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.