Getting Gold

When you visit an old One in the Care Home

it’s not much fun;

not so beautiful to clap eyes on frames

and hunchbacks;

the lady with a dress riding too high

boo-hooing

and Aunt’s intensity ‘You don’t know what it’s like for me.

No one does.’

 

But up there on the incessant flat screen,

bright as a galaxy, the Beijing Olympics,

team GB, greatest achievement,

UK athletes (all that gold)

with medals, anthems, shining faces,

thighs and torso, smoothly dolphin,

all the family proud as Punch

and the nation pleased as Punch

 

so I turn,

sever Auntie’s gaze,

when only two dimensions

grab me more than starving eyes

 

and it makes her cry;

that I look away.