Photo by Abbilyn RurenkoEdson Rosas on Unsplash

The celebration was VE day
Grandmother waved the news
front page pictures told the story
“The War Is Over”
“We Won”

Bunting jollied every building
people walked slowly in the evening
English summer nights
with no raids threatening;
sweet victory indeed!

They gathered at The Coach and Horses
the pub across the road
with doors wide open, no blackout,
we heard the glasses clink, the laughter ring,
the piano music and the singing of old songs

Grandmother opened the old upright,
which I had never seen done before.
We clustered round her, with friends and cousins.
Waiting for the revelation of her playing,
another of those things that made our Granny
a reservoir of power that we aspired to.

She poised her hands, then hit the notes,
We stood transfixed
Grandmother new the treble hand,
and the base she plunked with thumb and pinky finger.
No matter where those two digits landed.
and the sound echoed from the rosy wallpaper,
rolled out under the smoky ceiling
into the deepening blue of the evening,
and we sang.