Colin Tait Copyright © Florence Cox 2011

He has a comfortable, crumpled country face
with teeth like a wonky fence
and a smile that instantly opens your heart.
I ask him where he lives, and he tells me
I wouldn’t have heard of the place, and he’s right.

I ask him how long he’s lived there, and he says
with a twinkly look, “Seventy-nine years!”
- a whole lifetime in one house.

I ask him where he worked before he retired and he says,
“I just stepped out of my back door.”

I expect he wrestled his living from the land
with the same gentle humour he shows now,
quietly picking up his piano accordion,
pushing and pulling a harvest of joy out of it,
putting rhythm into hearts, feet, lips
as surely as if he had just stepped
out of his back door.