Polly Want a Cracker

Polly Want a Cracker

Aunt Alma had an aviary now and spent

the long summer evenings with her birds,

While Albert no longer needing her words,

preferring his own company, corpulent

and disagreeable would sit intent

on a flickering screen and some absurd

quiz show, in a dark room, undisturbed

amongst the fetid smell of cats – content.

There is a photograph of them in an

old album, and it’s there, leaving London.

Hard to put your finger on, but something

that separated that young woman:

Portsmouth, Sundays in the rain and the one

who no longer burned his heart with anything.