Two Poems

The first spring of the new century
and there I was, fallen pregnant!

Scarcely out of winter, even -
scarcely 1800 at all -

with not a bud on the trees yet
when the new thing budded in me.

They said I ought to have known better:
after all, I was over thirty.

William was younger; and men, of course …
but he came round fair in the end.

We couldn't sit the banns through,
giggled at for three Sundays -

not in Lichfield. He got a licence
and wedded me the next morning

in Armitage. July, it was
...