We Need Buttons

School cancelled, work off, all three of us. We played the snow scene:


‘WE NEED BUTTONS’

Bagged, we keep them,
stubbly as unkempt chins.
Like stones they sit -
cold, silent;
no two ‘poppies’ the same.

To take one middling,
grainy lump he removes
an outsize glove,
plunges deep his Irish hand,
feels the ancient history.

We hear the thud -
a juicy cut makes two
damp stampers
for her to press
into the snowman’s
belly.

She calls him Bert.