Auntie Joyce
I knew your face when I saw you
from the backseat window
in the hospital car park
where you stood talking to my dad,
so I must have seen you before then.
Perhaps at your son’s wedding,
for you had to be there.
I remembered you also when
we turned up at his house
as we passed it coming back
from a Sunday afternoon walk.
He was out but you were
looking after your new grandson.
Once at the top of Salters Road we met you
going into a shop as we came out –
Bob was waiting in the car.
His face lit up when my mum knocked
on the window. That’s my only clear
memory of him, though he too
was there the other times.
You came out of the shop
with a bag of Maltesers for us.
I wasn’t to see you again for maybe
ten years, by which time I understood
who you were. My grandad’s sister,
though you could have been
Thora Hird’s twin with a Geordie accent.
Each occasion going forward would be
a wedding, a funeral or a birthday,
the last one your own 95th.
You were in the front seat of a car
when I waved you goodbye, as I was
the other day when I heard you’d died.
Peter J Donnelly lives in York where he works as a hospital secretary. He has degrees in English Literature and Creative Writing from Lampeter University. He has been published in various magazines and anthologies including One Hand Clapping, Black Nore Review, High Window, Southlight and Dreich. He was a joint runner up in the Buzzwords Open Poetry Competition in 2020 and won second prize in the Ripon Poetry Festival competition in 2021.