By Kim Waters.
Her Xmas card arrives – twice.
My address listed under
married and unmarried names.
One shows a muscular Santa –
a bobsled rider, catching
a reindeer ride on a steep incline.
On the other, he’s larger,
slugging a jug of frothy beard
bubbled with Ho Ho Ho!
Inside – her familiar chronicle
on mistletoe-edged paper
with an annual weather report,
a review of book-club titles
and a catalogue of friends
she’s seen throughout the year.
When I was a kid, she’d come
for Xmas in a Holden Torana
with tinselled aerial,
wearing a floppy grin
and plum pudding ear-rings.
All her clothes were made
by hand, except for a pair
of Target jeans she wore
with a leather-carved belt.
Liquor never passed her lips,
but she laughed with the gusto
of an oncoming train.
She had nicknames for all,
often ending in bones
and referred to our town
as the Big Smoke. She
never married but loved
her garden that she watered
with a tin watering can,
as though that and the river,
which ran along her fence line,
were a mere extension
of the ebbs and flows
that shape a life.
It’s been many years
since I’ve seen her in person,
but as I read her latest missive
– twice – I realise
there’ll come a time
when I’ll miss the weather report.
