NOCTURNE

A phalanx of old ladies
Each wheelchair like a throne
Sit doped and dozy in the Kozy
Kare Retirement home.
Our hair's time-bleached to monochrome,
Our teeth are not our own;

Since it's got so hard to chew,
We live on tablets, mince and stew.

Precarious, this refuge
(Eight hundred pounds a week)
Meant selling off the bungalow
In Frinton, not Mustique:
We're better placed than plenty,
But the present's pretty bleak.

We're stuck with nothing much to do;
Our visitors are none or few.

Time was we went to dances,
Our hair in lacquered curls;
In sugar-stiffened petticoats,
We executed twirls.
Oh, how we used to jitterbug,
When we were pretty girls!


        Valerie Grosvenor Myer
                  1935-2007