I sit where I always sit in the pink chair with wings. There are no papers or magazines here. My mother's eyes close, her pinnie dappled with porridge,
her hands warming mine. Blue hands. Blue from my walk across Saturday market, across the car park through the door that only lets you in.
I sit where I always sit in the pink chair with wings. Jean shrieks, My mother died. Then my brother died. My father, he had cancer. We drink tea. We watch the blossom blow. I was ready to go. I wanted to go. They were mean. We remember the sea. We talk of the waves. We feel the cold. I got ready in my dress. They were mean because they wouldn't let me go. Jean remembers the sea and its waves and wants to see them again.
My mother cradles the past like a favourite child Too wrapped in her world to risk the outside.
Our tutor, Geoff Jones, gave us the first line - I sit where I always sit. Another tutor, Don Barnard, tried to teach us how to write a sonnet. The above was my attempt.
Question
This hard upholstered chair is not mine. Through the windows men and women Get out of cars to go shopping.
This door is not our door. In the corner of the room is an aquarium Angel fish, zebra fish and glints of colour. We have a dog called Roger; we aren't keen on fish.
Perfume fills the air like a disguise. Two women In uniform step into the room Though no one is ill.
You frown. You pat my hand. I ask, 'How are you?' You do not answer. In the palm of my hand a biscuit is melting. I lick the chocolate As delicately as a kitten.
Next to me, an elderly couple sit close on a settee. She slips a hand into the front of his trousers. Leaves Fly off the trees.
Prompted by a reported death in a newspaper, I worked at this poem for several years, before I considered it finished.
Perspective
Your mother is fine!
Is she asking for me? Does she wonder when one sister will be back from Rome the other from the Scilly Isles remember what she had for breakfast? Has she thrown away her spill proof cup, her plate with the special edge? Has she jumped from her wheelchair insisted her hair is cut and permed demanded the keys to the bungalow found her purse phoned my dad asked him why she isn’t living at home?
I rang The Home to ask how my mother was. My initial anger became the poem. The title my recognition of our differing points of view.
180 Anglo Saxon skeletons excavated*
whispering bones waiting in line singing stones whispering waiting in line words sung whispering waiting in line sung beneath tremulous diapason whispering waiting in line below wall wash blackened emptiness whispering whispering bones waiting in line old tyme words whispering while waiting in line words hidden under stone burned bones buried waiting in line whispering words slip like soup sweet as mead resurrected whispering bones waiting in line black under stone whisper words sing secrets stone bones filed in line held like an organ stop washed whispering slow, singing, waiting waiting in line washed bones whispering whispering bones