for Jennifer Strauss
A primary teacher taking courses,
he loved the little girls,
never hard enough to be sacked:
parents made him change schools.
When sure this was his life sentence,
he dropped studies for routine:
the job, the Turf papers, beer,
the then-new poker machine.
Always urbane, he boarded happily
among show-jump ribbons, nailed towels,
stockwhip attitudes he’d find reasons for
and a paddock view, with fowls.
Because the old days weren’t connected
the boss wouldn’t have the phone.
The wife loved cards, outings, “Danny Boy,”
sweet malice in a mourning tone.
Life had set his hosts aside, as a couple,
from verve or parenthood.
How they lived as a threesome enlivened them
and need not be understood.
Euchre hands that brushed away the decades
also fanned rumour
and mothers of daughters banned the teacher
in his raceday humour,
but snap brim feigning awe of fat-cattle brim
and the henna rinse between them
enlarged each of the three to the others, till
the boss fell on his farm.
Alone together then, beyond the talk,
he’d cook, and tint, and curl,
and sit voluble through rare family visits
to his aged little girl.
As she got lost in the years
where she would wander,
her boy would hold her in bed
and wash sheets to spread under.
But when her relations carried her,
murmuring, out to their van,
he fled that day, as one with no rights,
as an unthanked old man.