Nana Owns Her Dreams

She wants to retain
Her own independence.
Dream between her brushed cotton sheets.
Rest her sleepy head on lavender pillows
for night time tristes
with Olivier and Sharif.
She wants to grease the walls of her kitchen
with bacon fat
and slide on her own linoleum.
She wants to close her own door tight
against the town's midnight blare.
She wants to block out loneliness
with her own amber brown bottle of Nitrazipan
And be free to forget how many she has taken.

She wants to
be at home
to scrape too much sunday lunch
into the fish pond.
(yes I saw you nana)
and search again for the myriad of things she loses,
letters, glasses, stamps, keys, handbag, TV Times
(you are sitting on it nana).

She wants to
dust her pink telephone
with baby powder,
and make her own calls,
dial 1571
and chat to answer-phone messages,
frustrated with the unresponsive callers.

She wants to
put on her own stockings
and wash her own toes.
She wants to paint her nails purple to match her bell bottoms
and pink satin swash.

She wants to get up between 8.30 and 9,
potter to the kitchen table
and paint her face
the way she has for 79 years
(14 was her first adolescent stroke of beauty)
same lipstick,
same tanned powder,
same pencil to outline her brows,
and finally
and
carefully
to re-place
and position
on her small
dainty head,
her candy floss coloured wig.

Now in
there
the secret's out
and her wisps of
white are unveiled
duck fluff
and feathers,
left to float unguarded on
starched, stamped slips:

"Llandoch hospital.
Boil wash."