mother

Smuggler’s bay

No longer floating light,
Am I carrying someone else?
Am I now another’s boat to the next life?

Out they come, the little doubts lining
Up on the shore, like troops.
Will they let us pass?

Assisted concept


I am here, on the shore
Of conception.

The eleventh floor of the
Tower wing.

How light and shiny the
The notice board.

The place where babies
Are prescribed.

Birthing


Create multiple lines. Blood lines, tear lines, love lines. Multiple directions that multiply upon the world more blood, tears and love.

As a child grows, lines unfurl in borrowed darkness until they reach their own light which grows and grows until the time of their own

darkness, when new lines multiply over theirs and then grow away, as they did, towards light, towards darkness.

Motherhood

My mother said she could see me with little
Boys, like little suns, tiny stars, their own

Planets rolling about the sky, their sky, with
Me a moon, but a moon, smaller now, but

Gripped by them, in their orbit circling them
For the rest of my life and out beyond it

Into the blankness of their lives unlived yet,
To outlive my light, to bounce off my rock

When it is dead, when it is simply a reflection
Of theirs.

Mother

You are stronger

Than the bay that is beaten

All day and all night, you

Are cleaner and brighter than

The cool fragments of matter

That cake round our toes,

Softly absorbing their heat.

 

You are wiser

Than the ache of oak creaking

As the bark is baked, you

Are livelier at heart than

The leaves that crackle round

The edges of the hazels,

Crisping autumn into nuts.

 

You are kinder

Than the caves that are hidden

Away from cats who play catch,

Safe nesting for runny eggs

Impatient to hatch wet wings,

Your ledges echo with the

Quiet drop of Peace on stone.

 

You are better

Than the ravens at keeping

Watch lifelong through the

Woe and the weather, the

Sheets of fog and the pain, your

Sweet call is the plain truth

That feeds hope through to your young.

 

Thank you.