Touched by Memory

Grandmother’s grand piano,
dust motes in the sunlit afternoon
scatter on the rosewood lid.
Memory follows the line of light,
places an aspidistra
where the television now stands,
in what was grandma’s room.
The Siamese from Windygates –
otherwise known as number 29 –
prowls among the roses
she planted in nineteen fifty seven.
She never trusted cats.
She trusted no one,
following her betrayal
by the only man she ever loved
in nineteen sixty nine.
Numbers,
cast like runes,
tell her fate.
69 – betrayal
75 – diagnosis
83 – death.
And the grand piano
still remembers
the touch of her fingers

© R Hopkins 2014