my grandmother
walking home on Sundays
wore a cotton dress
past the bodgies slouched by the wall
winter through summer
winklepicker shoes pointed
didn’t feel the cold
ready to flick
never stopped
quick snap
in her life
on a back country farm
we focus on their ankles
took her sick child to hospital
garbed in socks of shocking pink and lime
never saw her darling again
shocking pink and lime
except in a photograph
the colours of the words
imprinted on the love hearts we buy from the milk bar
(c) Helen McKinlay
It is important to be bold as poets but not always easy. Recently for fun, my poetry group decided to try writing three in one poems. There are many ways to do this and we all interpreted the topic differently. Having had a busy week I was unenthusiastic and decided to take a short cut. I made a random choice of two previously written poems and taking the first half of each, I put them together. The lines in italics are from a poem about my grandma who lived in the backcountry of NZ and lost a young child to meningitis. The others are from a poem about my young self, walking home past a group of bodgies… I am intrigued at how well the lines worked togther and added meaning, for me anyway. Please return to Tuesday Poem , check out Sarah’s editorial and view the great selection of poems in the sidebar.
gurglewords 
I think this experiment has worked really well – if you hadn’t explained how the poem came about, I would not have thought that it was two different poems smooshed together in this way.
When I saw the picture at the head of this post, I thought “Teds!” – the drape jackets, the drainpipe trousers… Is “bodgies” the New Zealand equivalent of the British term “Teds” (“Teddy boys”)?
Hi Tim, Thanks for the positive feedback 🙂 Re the teds…you are right. Bodgies and widgies(girlfriends of bodgies,) are the ANZ copy cat variety. Those names just rock don’t they!
What a great word bodgies is! I like it.
Thanks Emma. Bodgies is a cool word. Even cooler, their girlfriends were called widgies!