Writing from the stemistry lab
Family tree
by Marilyn Longstaff
He’s chopping wood in the farmyard –
wanting heads to roll, well one, at least.
This can’t have happened,
not to her. But she won’t name the rat.
So he makes do with logs, splitting them
as he’d like to split the culprit’s skull.
His grandfather’s clock ticks loudly in the kitchen.
She’s wearing royal blue, a loose gown,
with lace cuffs; she’s smaller than I thought.
They want to cast their sister into holy limbo,
these elder daughters, righteous matrons,
standing, straight, behind the scrubbed table,
folded arms across their starched aprons.
Only Sarah, her aunt by marriage, pleads her cause,
Let Christian Charity hold sway.
Let her raise the child within his family,
work as housekeeper for her widowed father.
A non-conformist shiver in the solar plexus,
the stench of thrilled, respectable anticipation
as they await the falling axe of his decision.
The sky turns black, the rain comes.