Disgrace Poem by Charlotte Peters Rock

It wasn't that I minded
sitting near a failing fire
as our babies slept upstairs

nor that the money wouldn't
stretch from week to week for meat
to stop their hungry crying

But when he came home late
I minded losing sleep and
I minded fumes of smoke and beer and money

and later still his drunken friend
peeing on the bathroom floor
the shout of What's to eat?

but in spite of silent evenings
alone inside my thoughts
the wireless no substitute for him

my knitting growing shapely
fingers sore from clacking
needles stabbing into woollen thread

What I minded most of all
was hearing from a disliked neighbour
of his jaunt with drunken friend

on across the railway bridge
pub to sleazy pub by motorbike
a woman perched astride the petrol tank

20Nov1996 CPR