VILLAGE OF ATHEA, 1963

By Noel King

In her son’s room

     she found white porcelain inkwells

          he’d stolen from his school.

               Feeling ashamed, she placed them in wooden orange crates;

                    put on a headscarf and her late mother’s wide-rim glasses

                          and placed the boxes in the middle of the night

                               outside the school gate with a one word note – SORRY;

                          just that, SORRY sellotaped to the top.  

                     The following Friday, the Sentinel newspaper

                reported the extraordinary find.

          The mother was glad to restore them intact,

     wished she had her son back,

wondered for a nanosecond

about pinning the news clipping on the headstone above his grave.

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