On My Mother’s Birthday

My Mother had she lived was 106 this month

when snapdragons have bloomed

finches have pecked holes in leafy kale

She was 21 when she married in January 1939

then the war

her husband came home from Dunkirk

23 a first child

then her husband was in North Africa

he came home wounded minus an eye and some of his foot

26 a second child

a third 14 months later

widowed at 36

died aged 59

She liked crosswords

did them in the Daily Mirror

where there’s a moment’s stillness

before the incoming tide

seeping back from the shingle 

as waves reach the beach

exhausted

my widowed mother.

Dick Russell (c) Richard M. Russell

                     2024