Photo by Jordan Madrid on Unsplash

I found my Grandfather’s magnifying glass today,
and I used it gratefully to read a recipe.
As I mixed butter and brown sugar, memories
wanted to flood out intentions of coffee cake,
in favor of him, using this little glass to read
the newspaper’s accounts of battles and bombings.

He read by lamp light, beside the fire, and
children must be quiet so that Grandmother
and Mum and Aunt Win could hear
his warm voice, graveled by years of
ale and weather.

So I dismiss thoughts of what we
learned of war on those evenings, and
attend to the molded pink frame of this little
magnifier.
It is quite grimy, and I  go to
the sink to wash it clean, but
something stops me.

I look at the frame, and then wash
only the silvery handle.
This grime is from his fingers.
Fingers that worked among the weeds,
the burgeon of hedgerows, the
wildflowers of the lanes and fields
of Thorley.

Fingers that picked peas and sweet
william from his gardens.
Fingers that clasped my face as he
teased me with a whisker rub before
he shaved on Sunday mornings,
when I was little.

My own fingers move from the silver
folding handles to the dirty edges.
I will not wash the frame.

July 2009