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Diana Webb

Formidable

Purple beret perched above earrings that swing as she steers the basket-on-wheels. Auntie Doris with her dicky heart, not quite meeting me after school, she at one end of Woolworths, I at the other, passing each other with all the store's aisles in between, back and forth, back and forth...

On our arrival home her sisters fuss around her, mop her brow. I'm in disgrace. But later I'm forgiven. She survives. Survives for a long time yet...

Now confined to her room upstairs, she turns the radio down, holds an audience; earrings dangling, she tells of accomanying a priest on visits to London's poor and of mad magenta moments.

prunes soaking
in a bedside jar—
afternoon sunlight