Untitled #10 / Popping To The Shop With My Grandmother

I look left then right

Up the street the way I was told

To as a kid and if I stay here

And look hard enough eventually I’ll see

A problem. I’m looking for the supermarket

Pulling along a blue-veined hand

Freckled with age

And I must remind myself

Not to be harsh with it as I hold it. These hands once carefully

Put my mother down into a cot and

Changed her nappies and drove her to school.

There’s the supermarket. Do you need help crossing the road?

My gran crosses herself.

That currency isn’t taken here, you’ll

Have to exchange it. I stop an older fella

To ask where, and he says

Something racist about the shop on the corner

Where a family has quietly contributed

To their community for

Three generations.

I exchange what I can for change

And look to where

My gran is on the other side of the street.

Neither of us move and the gulf is eternal.

It’s black and only a thin white line

Separates us and my gran crosses herself.

In the name of the father and of the son,

Left then right -

And all I see are problems.