Natal Days! Jammin' with Vick!

It has not been an easy month; however, rumours of my death have been greatly exaggerated.
And though the Bus has reached its final terminus, now we can Jam each week instead. Hooray for NanU!

Everyone else is here now, with a Linky Widget: http://poetryjaam.blogspot.com/2011/05/and-so-it-begins.html

Unbelievably, today really is my birthday. Let's get fruity...



May 9th, 1963

My fecund mother has a single story of my birth.
Familiar to the obstetrician, his first three words
on my appearance, ‘It’s a girl,’ were greeted by her
‘Thank God for that.’ No blood, pain or drama, my father
knee-deep in such back at the yard. He’d visit after dinner.
She tells me this every year and I want to say, why?
Why, if you were so pleased, relieved,
delighted, did you not pink and preen me?
You raised another boy, discarded half my first name,
left me to the slaughtermen, or all day with Dad
on the lorries, off to market, hair barbered never dressed.
Tantrum at five meeting my first skirt, you have to wear it,
then those kilts, those bloody kilts, that were deemed
up-to-London wear for best shopping days:
everyone called me Jock. ‘My name is Jo and I am a girl,’
no one ever heard, the latest Orlando (The Marmalade Cat)
purchased to placate me. I can tell the stories still.
At 48, I wear my hair long to provoke her,
ponder past midnight the high definition of those times.
I shouted at a son last night. That, I may not remember.