Tuesday Poem: Victory

Victory

Warm still from hot water and lavender soap, from a clean dry towel,

from a new lace bra, but losing heat fast in a grey room, on a cold slide

with a Velcro tag  for ‘right breast’. The nondescript woman in a denim

skirt slides across the lino to click the button and start the scan. She returns

to turn me over like eggs in a frypan. Firmly, gently, so as not to break the yolks.

She sees my hand go up, flap the air and drop again. It’s a new machine, fewer

handles, she says, you feel like you need something to hang onto. In case I fall, I 

say. But of course I can’t fall, I am clamped like the mouse in the pantry last week

with its nose in the trap,

and in a blue apron, with onions frying, I was the nondescript woman, crossing

the room, calling my son, grabbing the soup ladle, the pestle, the heavy knife,

anything to still the terrible panic, the frantic warm caught body. But nothing

would do. Not squeamishness but violence pushed us back from the pantry door:

pulsing from the concrete floor, ricocheting off the shelves of tinned tomatoes

and packets of flour and nuts, smashing up against our shins. Hot. Angry.

Incandescent. Nothing timorous or cowering about it. No flapping in the air

trying to hang on to something that wasn’t there, no meek waiting while the skin

cooled. We dropped our weapons, quit crying, canned the obscenities, and in the

sanity of silence, simply pressed a heel on the tip of that stupid plastic trap.

And it ran from us. Crookedly, but it ran. 

                                                           Mary McCallum

Thinking of the people in Canterbury in the aftermath of the terrible 7.1 earthquake - not least our southern Tuesday Poets - no poem seemed right for today's Tuesday Poem. But I looked again, and up popped this one. It speaks of that glorious thing they need down south right now.

And from the stories we hear, these Cantabrians certainly have courage in abundance, and are fighting back against this natural disaster, 'nothing timorous or cowering' about them. Victory in sight, although it will be a long haul. 

I love the story of the dairy owner who's opened up his dairy to people saying they can take what they need and come back and pay him when they're able to. My heart goes out, especially, to parents of young children trying to cope in damaged homes with restricted water supplies.

Here's a report from Kathleen Jones - UK poet and Mansfield biographer visiting her daughter in Christchurch; and one from Christchurch author Rachael King who has two small children to care for and, after a few sleepless nights, plans to Keep Calm and Carry On. 

At least everyone is safe. Crooked but safe.

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