My Grandmother Said

It was the First World War.
Her husband was away.
So she knew fear, but also found
new freedom in the day.

On Thursdays, with the farmer’s wife,
old basket in her lap,
by butter slabs, she rode to Brigg,
shawled, in the pony trap.

Oh how I envied her!
I whined to Brigg by bus,
for school, no pony’s dancing knees,
first sun in elder bush.

She would have crossed the Ancholme,
seen the canal glint wide.
She could buy apples and white thread,
jog home, to new moon’s rise.

‘But I was frozen, to my bones,
all winter.’ Was that all?
My grandfather took up the reins.
She settled in her shawl.