a path well trodden

a path well trod

 

 

a broken cello caught Angie’s eye

as she rummaged Portobello piles

rooting still-edible vegetables  

 

she fixed its snapped neck

with Christmas-wrapping sellotape -

 

a set of strings would have to wait

 

she sat at the window of her bed-sit

miming to Brahms on the wireless set

reprising drunken nights in Dalkey...

 

before she fell to ‘nature’s way’

 

and removed her cash from the Credit Union

to fund an emergency trip to London,

where the ‘doctor’ bodged the operation -

 

Angela will never have children  

 

how would she explain her absence and pain

to her boy-next-door fiancé, Kevin?

 

soup boiled over the baby Belling

dripping to the lino floor –

not in anger, more in sorrow,

she chucked the cello through the window -

 

it splintered on the street below

her lousy bedsit in Ladbroke Grove,

where she lived by scavenging,

and scrounging drinks and cigarettes

 

that bastard artist was to blame

for posing her, red hair flowing free,

in a bath of icy water,

 

while simpering, 'my darling Ophelia’

 

she all but caught her death of pneumonia

stayed in bed ten days to recover

meanwhile the painter put her to 'the sword' -

and Kevin, her fellah, was never the wiser  

 

Angela left the soup to stain the floor

tip-toed past the landlord’s door
the withheld rent would pay her fare

to patch things up with her man in Kildare.