Mother who has been
my
broken bowl my holy grail
my
long silence my
spoken truth
my
tiny bound feet my seven league boots
my
never quite my every first
prize
when
you come on the forgotten well among the trees
lower
the bucket, hand over hand: the rope will hold
as you
draw up the cold clear water. Feel how it cools
your
blood’s wild fire, scorched earth greens
back, seeds burst,
and
you can read again the hieroglyphics of branches
budding
across the sky. Birds wake to fly and small animals
uncurl
among the nascent ferns. Listen –
a
child’s untroubled voice rings on the morning air, singing
as you
fetch water for your mother from the wood well
and
nothing will be lost.
Here
is your father, once the youngest boy
neighbours
had ever seen between
the
handles of a plough, the hardest worker.
He
lies under my heart carved
in stone,
grown
to the man who never wept.
Soft
as a breast, your mother
is my
children’s remembered dream of milky mouths.
Each
thought undone, each memory unpeeled,
each
year of you, I fold, hold to my cheek
like
the white linen your grandmother sewed
by
candlelight. I breathe you in, the living skin of me
knowing
it was always too late for us, for
everything
happens
as it must, in its own moment.
As I
become the past on which the future rests,
forgiveness
is a final irrelevance.
Years
from now, on some perfect summer evening,
I will
look and you’ll be in the garden, gathering fruit.
A
small dog will follow at your heels
as you
pick gooseberries, bursting juice,
strawberries
red ripe under leaves.
When
you see me, you will beckon me to come,
and
I’ll run down the years into your arms.
From Snakeskin Stilettos 1998