Delma

Delma 

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Well Dell is ninety two today they say

so straightaway we know she’s very old,

but furthermore, she walks upstairs, the way 

that 63-year-olds are not so bold!

She’s out for “coffee” up and down the street, 

from drinking “teapots” back into the car,

more than a dozen calls where she will greet 

her friends and relatives from where they are.

A model of “a relative”*, in shop

she talks with people, smiles and understands.

It’s hard to swim, but though she says she’s stopped

I wouldn’t think she couldn’t, ‘f she began

again; but still she watches those who do

and loves to see her grandkids have a go.

She’s thankful for good help, & when it’s you

it sounds like she said it, because it’s so.

That true, her body’s frail, but still a gift.

Some said today that she’d been lazy and

she didn’t disagree, she missed the lift

walked to the car, got in and out, as planned.

Dell still enjoys a drop of “Champagne” wine,

She’s gone off beer a while ago they say,

She’s given up the smoking, just in time

to have COPD, not gone away

yet, though her body’s problems (quite a few)

remain, she tells her fam’ly how things are

when asked. Though she is honest, she “makes do”

with what she’s got. “Terrific!” is her spar.

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*  picture (below), done by a son-in-law who is a budding, but beginning artist, who has found he has a special talent for doing pictures of people’s distant relatives, who look a tiny bit like his model, but not very much actually. In a coffee shop by the Currumbin beach, thanks to Del’s daughter Anne, who kept Del’s gaze in one direction by conversing with her.

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