Shopping Without

grocer's orders

Every Tuesday morning the Silvan grocer delivered last
week's order to the stove-warm hubbub of the farm kitchen;
bicarb, tartaric acid, salt, vegemite. jelly crystals, junket,
golden syrup, peanut butter, hundreds and thousands,

gravox, butter, arrowroot, sealing wax or washing soap
-and it could really be gross, John Bull rolled oats,
50 pounds of flour in calico bags, of sugar in hessian,
weeta flakes in the 50 pound cardboard carton.

in picking time the picker's orders were rung
through the Burleigh PO and brought out
in a separate box the grocer readily made
a packet up on weekly house calls

the grocer liked to look ready, his grey apron on,
a pen behind his ear and a willingness to serve.
He'd get any product Mum wanted in, taking a memo
as if he was a serious-minded politician

he'd nod his head and say: 'I'm sure we can
manage that. Yes! You're right Mrs Knoll!
I don't know what the place is coming to,
as if it mattered to him as he toted up the bill

if I was home from school
he'd say as if it wasn't obvious
"Off school sick, lad!' with deadpan delivery
'Mind you eat and get better.'

Then he would take the money
with the handwritten order
for next-week's pantry restock
and current conversation;

For all lists made as busy grocer's orders
were the only way in we ever entered his talked-of shop
as if to travel out to have such commerce would
make us ill at ease, be indignity and disgrace.