Dentures

The other sunny day,
leaving for good my job pestering
already-charitable phonecall recipients
to buy into a lottery
for Age Concern, countering
all arguments, as instructed
in a full day's training,
a shout bounced off me
and an old lady
claimed responsibility,
tottering across the grass
in a flux in the heat.

She wanted to go
to John Lewis, to catch
the bus that had dropped her
there earlier, spurning the perfectly adequate
bus station. I cheerfully offered
to take her there.
Of course, I got us lost,
walking gradually - her legs frail,
her steps heel to toe - in
the perfectly opposite direction.

I phoned hurriedly for a taxi, while
she wrung her hands
and kept repeating
the time her coach left, as if
two more ejaculations of
"Quarter past three, they said. Oh dear.
Are you quite sure this cab will appear?"
and a heel click might take her there.

Rounding the corner like a musketeer
foiling the corrupt cardinal of time,
the car from Beeline 666333
was a sight like a palm tree
in a coconut drought.
She climbed inside.

I paid the driver, mortified
and walked off on my own
two springy pins.