Catch, my Uncle Jack said and oh I caught this huge apple red as Mrs Kelly's bum. It's red as Mrs Kelly's bum, I said and Daddy roared and swung me on his stomach with a heave. Then I hid the apple in my room till it shrunk like a face growing eyes and teeth ribs.

Then Daddy took me to the zoo he knew the man there they put a snake around my neck and it crawled down the front of my dress I felt its flicking tongue dripping onto me like a shower. Daddy laughed and said Smart Snake and Mrs Kelly with us scowled.

In the pond where they kept the goldfish Philip and I broke the ice with spades and tried to spear the fishes; we killed one and Philip ate it, then he kissed me with the raw saltless fish in his mouth.

My sister Mary's got bad teeth and said I was lucky, hen she said I had big teeth, but Philip said I was pretty. He had big hands that smelled.

I would speak of Tom', soft laughing, who danced in the mornings round the sundial teaching me the steps of France, turning with the rhythm of the sun on the warped branches, who'd hold my breast and watch it move like a snail leaving his quick urgent love in my palm. And I kept his love in my palm till it blistered.

When they axed his shoulders and neck the blood moved like a branch into the crowd. And he staggered with his hanging shoulder cursing their thrilled cry, wheeling, waltzing in the French style to his knees holding his head with the ground, blood settling on his clothes like a blush; this way when they aimed the thud into his back.

And I find cool entertainment now with white young Essex, and my nimble rhymes.

Note: A poem to remind me to actually break the ice, and spear a fish in the frozen pond around which I walked around just this past weekend.