Unadopted Affinities

Unadopted Affinities

Twelve deaf children did not arrive at dawn 

With pick-axe handles to pound the stout old door

Until the welkin rang and good old friends 

Did not bring schnapps and old accordions.   

No street urchins called out as they passed by,

“The Latimers are off to Filton Squinney!”

The day the Latimers moved in,

One of someone’s special casseroles

Wasn’t waiting for them on the porch

In Gammy Belchard's periwinkle dish

With a request attached to return it Friday night –

 “Some neighbors will be dropping by for drinks.”

Filton Squinney didn’t bid them welcome.

From the morning chorus of obscenities 

To the nightly fusillade of human faeces 

Their life was a running sluther of abuse.

But Latimer was stalwart – even when

The neighbours ate his wife and children.

One night when the air is full of falling stars 

And all the world except the Latimers 

Lies buried in the fields of Filton Squinney,

A shining lamb will come to Latimer 

As he sits weeping in his garden shed

And bring him tidings much too deep for tears:

“I am Thredgar, Lamb of Lavender.

Death will never come to this gazebo –

Or pavilion, call it what you will.

The world that never used to be your friend 

Is now your oyster – but not your Shangri-la.

So I have come to be your missing pearl.”