viewConstant Soldier
by Tris Kerslake
Too young to know the sorrow of her younger days
I watch the old girl worry at the weeds
that crowd her clifftop garden, chivvying the daisies
with a wrinkled grip.
Her stockings slipping unconcerned, she mutters ancient charms
to drive the devil out of nature, she does not care
for modern sprays: instant answers do not please her kind.
Druidic rites of sacrifice patrol her roses
and her Love Lies Bleeding.
My mother’s mother wipes the trickled sweat
that oils her cheek, returning to the tumbled soil a part
of life, begetting life with every motion of her hand,
she is the earth.
She rises like a child and smiles at me, not quite a child,
the years between us matter nothing in the sun.
We share the hidden hopes of daffodils and phlox.
The stones she throws aside mere echoes
of the ones she loves.
Her empire claimed, she relishes the sky
and estimates an early rain with practiced eye,
politely questions me of homework and of lifeless things that pale
beside the mettle that she is.
Soft steps between the lily and the vetch, her current life
a gentle ebb that leads to lilies more enduring
and weeds that grow unseen. She balances upon
my hand and takes me into early thoughts of autumn
which slows all things.
I see her as she will become, not frail, not quiet in a hospice bed
but reckless in the spirit of my greener hours,
connected by the line, the careless issue of her clay
ignores the closer view.
With memories of times before there was a time for me
she ranks her days with flowers, a poor bloom that, and more,
a bitter winter then. Enacting country life as farmers would,
dismissive tags on bovine ears, she’s no good for man nor beast,
she scans the sky.
My mother’s mother hoists her stockings to half-mast
and reconciles the bygones with emphatic hands
that rub the steady earth to shades of drab along her arms,
she licks a palm.
We move away to clinking china from the house below
bereft of blooms, the granite fort of home, my father’s house,
seems gloomy in the damping day; like veterans we shoulder arms.
The budding night will hold no joy for us, no light
within my father’s house.
Called into tea, my mother pours the acrid Assam herb
that soothes and thins the bitterness inside
and plans her stratagem on plates of cake and scone, the two
her infantry of war.
She is the constant soldier of my life, whose every task
is numbered, regimented by the book my father writes.
A luckless private she, duty-struck, consigned forever
to a lowly post. My mother, reticent supreme, awaits
the words of drill.
Surviving war, a land-girl of the north,
who made a life along the edge of storm and rock
surviving now the spiteful squalls and tempests of my father
that threaten to engulf.
Strong she is with a soldier’s thickened crust for scorn,
she braves her general, her gardener and child
and lets the angry words slide free, slides them away
to places deep within her northern bones.
She never cries.
Alerted by the merest hint of day
she mans the kitchen with a watchful eye
malingerers are not encouraged here, take an aspirin
and see her tomorrow.
But for the restless child there is an obscure care
she would deny point-blank. Though broken bones
soon mend, the aching core of youth
attracts a softer hand, she is my confidante,
my confessor.
And I, the child who took her favoured name,
who recognised the stiffer lip of pride through studied smiles
though child-like, I could not defray the dark
for her: the dark was home.
And darkness would have been the soldier’s lot,
precise, constructed like a prison cell
before a military end. My father took his ending to the sea,
and I, the child, could give him no salute, not quite a child.
The years between us.
Too soon the soldier stood upon another hill
and marched in slow-time all the gardens by, with friends
she gave her gardener a single rose, red rose,
to last for all the seasons long.
Too young to know the sadness of her younger years
I watch the old girl worry at the weeds
and proudly send her gardens full of sun, of ancient charms.
The stones she throws aside mere echoes
of the ones she loves.