I first heard this poem when I was aged around 37 yrs old and at the stage of realising my ‘Happy Ending’ really wasn’t going to happen. All my relatives and friends were caught up in family lives and as my days of surgery & treatments were in the past. I think they more or less viewed me (at least secretly) with envy. In their minds I had :more time, more money, more freedom to enjoy life. They just had no idea. This poem expressed what I felt exactly and I was so surprised to learn a Man had written it. Yes, guilty of conscious Bias! It made me cry and still gets to me now.
Gudrun Smith
Picnic on the Lawn by Vernon Scannell
Their dresses were splashed on the green
Like big petals; polished spoons shone
And tinkered with cup and saucer.
Three women sat there together.
They were young, but no longer girls.
Above them soft green applause
Of leaves acknowledged their laughter
Their voices moved at a saunter.
Small children were playing nearby;
A swing hung from an apple tree
And there was a sand pit for digging.
Two of the picnicking women
Were mothers. The third was not.
She had once had a husband, but
He had gone to play the lover
With a new lead in a different theatre.
One of the mothers said, ‘Have you
Cherished a dream, a fantasy
You know is impossible, a childish
Longing to do something wildly
‘Out of character? I’ll tell you mine.
I would like to drive alone
In a powerful sports car, wearing
A headscarf and dark glasses, looking
‘Sexy and mysterious and rich.’
The second mother smiled:
I wishI could ride through an autumn morning
On a chestnut mare, cool wind blowing
‘The jet black hair I never had
Like smoke streaming from my head,
In a summer swoop on a switchback sea.
Surf-riding in a black bikini.’
She then turned to the childless one:
‘And you? You’re free to make dreams come true.
You have no need of fantasies
Like us domestic prisoners.’
A pause, and then the answer came:
‘I also have a hopeless dream:
Tea on the lawn in a sunny garden,
Listening to the voices of my children.’
Vernon Scannell