1. Postscript

It rained last week:
Nearly, all week.
Unusual in a place more
Noted for high speed furious
Random storms, that
Come n dump n go, a hundred
Millimeters or more or so, in
Seconds or in minutes,
Fancy free.

By Friday morning it had spilt
Its spill, over, see:
One hundred and
Seventy millimeters plus three: on
Mill’s rainwater measuring jug:
Mill by mill for Mill in pattering
Sometimes pouring, wet
And watering prolific
Patterns on sod and softened paths
From late on Sunday
Until, then.

It poured heavily when the
Siberian hound howled
Me from my bed:
And room
To be let out: Friday,
At three AY EM: “It is a wolf
Not a dog” I called out after the
Frenzied
Creature, as it
Stormed into the rain
Drenched night: howled with frenzied
Fury into the rain drenched night:
Returned at last soaked right
To the bone… Went to a rug
And slept: alone.

And so reassured
We slept on,
Through until at last came
morning and the
rain
was gone

When we awoke to find the sun
Friday had already come.
You see
So it was only when
I went to her room
Again
To give to her
Her morning tea
That i discovered:
She had not gone
Gently into that
Wet dark night, Dylan:
No she had fought the fight that had
All times, previous, driven
That demon death away:
In fright.
No more.

I found that she had gone
And left me
To ponder on the mystery
Of the strange words
She had let flow in glee.
When she had so abruptly startled me.

Had some resolve
In her been softened
Substantially
Enough: to set her free?

2. Milly’s Last Rally

Mother beat Good Friday
By a week
Impaled on her own
Self konstrukted
Kross

So she did not die
Yesterday Albert; nor
Even
The day before.

She died it seems
Some time long
Ago
When I was only
Four.

Easter 2018
Good Friday morning –
My first Easter
Of liberation from
All that rage
And guilt.

Again that reproach;
She is gone and yet
I reach out my hand
Still
To prepare
Her morning cup of tea
Or yesterday her
Late PM hot repast.
Gone… Free

Gone again in all
Her outraged, urgent
Imperfection: laced through with
Ferocious, amorphous
Konsideration;
Wishing ill of those
Who hurt her once?
Or once again.

In Her closing words the
Night before
She
In her so trans
Parent
Manner; practicing her
Perpetual
Misdirection strategy that
Should not be
Proclaimed.
Used the well known alleged sins
Of our former President:
He of the leopard skins;
And pleasurable performance
Practices
To perhaps konfess
Her own
Culpability for sins
Gathered and
Never before professed:

“My SINS are katching up
With me.”
Her ME and MY replacing HIS
and HIM
As she shared at last
Her terror at
Some presumption carried
Forwards
For her eternity in a
Presumed burning
Place knowing, as
I now realize I did too, that
She was at the
Endgame.

“Good grief Mother”
I responded reflexively dis
Tracted
By the unknown Kom
Plexities of her micro
Wave
To take more than a
Reflexive
Response to an am
Bush from left field.
“I cannot believe you to be
One with SIN upon
Your hands
What SIN indeed!”

And then to my
Surprise and
Shock … abruptly:
She was at
My side.

Out of her chair into
Which, I had just assisted her
Arrival … and suddenly in one
Stride she was next to me:
At my side!

And in all her fiercest
Youthful rage
Railed at me
For my stupidity
For the
Ineptitude of a simple
12 years old
Incapable of
Matching simplicity to cog
Nitive
Acceptance.

In shock — Had she pretended all
This time
Her gradual: infirmity? – Had
She lied again: at the
Anguish in her bones, to move thus
With such
Dexterity, who earlier had
To be helped to
Move
At all?

Had I: unthinking
Forgiven her; for some deed
She had carried
With her; or deeds she Kontrived
To
Remember:
Unsaid… Did I prepare her
For that last release
As she then returned to
Her misdirection:
The President: to distract
Me from konsideration of my
own
Presumption of
“me and my”… and sinful?
Whatever,
Malfeasance: by mommy?
To ask
Or state: What did you really mean
by that?.

She said then
That she could not be
Lieve
That our Presi
Dent could proclaim his early
Innocence: as his defense
For subterfuge: when seduced
By the pragmatic gains of
Affluence.

And then
Before it could be probed:
Dismissal: and before the dawn
Came
She was gone
In a single relieved
Paroxysm

Leaving me but with the
Idea
That innocence
Had been debauched and in
The pleasures of
Debauchment
Was the absence of any
Awareness of
SIN: until the aching
Echoes of some
Pristine guilt, withheld:
Gradually
Subsumed
The knavish artlessness:
The simplicity of mere
Mortality.

!NiK[‘18]

We always knew our late Mother, Enid: That is her sons and late husband;
and eventually almost everyone, as Milly.
Most people thought it stood for Millicent.
But it was our abbreviation for Militant.

Milly was:
Late Mother [Milly] of: Nicholas and Glen, Welsh Milly in law to Diane and Rea.
Widow to the late, Warrant Officer: Charles M Williamson. RAF WW2 veteran of > 2000 flying hours as a captain of aircraft, left because he wanted to.
GrandMilly to: Dael, Donna-Sian, Siobhan [Chevy] Dawn, Leigh and Shannon.
GrandMilly in law to the Double Tam’s
Great GrandMilly to Sienna Poppy and Dexter Leo
Legendary Milly: to those as yet unborn.

To everyone else a nice little old lady, a retired bookkeeper, who kept a wonderfully sharp mind coupled to an ascerbic sense of humour to the end at 95 years, eleven months and nine days

She will in some circles be forever remembered for going to court at eighty something, to bat for her part time gardener: Moses Mthombeni. He had been unfairly arrested for allegedly stealing a bicycle. She succeeded not only in “getting him off”; but also generated the arrest of two police officers on corruption charges: as well as the arrest of the real culprits, operating under police protection. Good on ya Milly.

RIP: ‘Milly’… 1922-2018

170 mm = 68 inches