Granny

After 'This is not Love, perhaps' by Andrew Tessimond

For Granny

This is not success, perhaps
Success that wears shoulderpads in the boardroom,
That comes from a hunger to prove oneself right against men,
from degrees and doctorates or ambition.
But something gentler from nature's source,
Washed through with a softer hue, something,
more innocent, perhaps more true.

How many days spent folded double with hands in the soil,
Within nature's delicate balance to toil
undistracted and intent in creativity, unaffected by the mood swings of modernity
or aspriation in itself, over loved ones and community.

Beekeeper, painter, a gifted soul, selfless to the end;
A private moral obligation and spirituality a powerful and unique blend;
And when physical strength inevitably waned;
this was the bedrock that remained.

Weathering life's hard times, recognised but unspoken,
Contentment in simplicity and faith in good, never broken;
Blue eyes ever bright, and mind as keen,
as a teenage bride they would have been;
It is a woman like she; that I could only dream to be.