I
The Island of Doubt

What are these? Toothpicks or cocktail sticks? They are so fiddly.
Why are they so difficult to pick up? What are those sounds on
the roof? Birds? Are we near the sea? Who is that in the
photograph? No, it’s not me. I never had my hair like that. Why
are your feet blue? Oh, they’re shoes? I have no feeling in my
feet. If I fall, how will you pick me up? Oh, it’s pathetic, isn’t it?
Will someone please answer that phone? Is this medicine? How
is your mother? How did she look? Like you do right now. No,
I’m not tired. I lay awake all night. Can I get there by candlelight?
Yes, and back again. Oh I have been to Ludlow fair and le my
necklace God knows where. Are there still cedars in Lebanon?
Are there gales in Lundy? Are they drowning the meadows? Am
I standing in a stream? I can hear water. I am water gifted. I
remember the dropped glass in the stream. The silence was full
of birds. Wherever I am, I am what’s missing. Whatever’s
missing is where love has gone. Which of these voices is mine?
Few. But roses.


II
The Egg

I am holding an egg
in my hand.
One of life’s joys.
So perfect in shape.
So simple, yet complex.

But, of course,
I’m not really talking
about an egg.
I’m really talking
about my mother.

The egg is just a portal,
a vehicle merely to talk
about my mother.
Not one of life’s joys.
Not simple, but still complex.

What’s a poem for?
To unlock the secrets
of the universe.
To release the potential
of inanimate objects,

like eggs and mothers,
which are both part
of the same big question,
which I can and can’t talk about
in a poem.


III
Rooms

I am moving through the rooms.
Someone has turned me inside out and now
all my bad decisions are on show.
This juice is good but the beaker is too big.
This machine looks just like the sun.
1... 2... 3... 4...
My arms are electronic.
Twice I fought with the devil last night.
There is ash on my forehead.
The view from this room is nice –
a garden of reflection. Hills.


IV
My mother’s things

i.m. Diana Malcolm Cartland, née Greig, 1941–2019


Four Dior Addict 754 lipsticks
(Vibrant colour! Spectacular shine!).
Rolex Depose # Yoke/Sc x1.
A tape measure, pins & needles.
Three Radley purses (empty).
Photos in sepia of her Grandfather ‘Jimmy’ Leggat
(a ne’er-do-well from Airdrie),
her mother Jan on her wedding day
& her father Alec in Captain’s uniform in Cairo.
A yellow yo-yo.

after Sampaolo’s ‘Fantasticherie Infantili’


The first nurse, Ida Sessions, carries her white balloon –
it is heavy as lead, dead weight.
She lives with it, calls it her monkey.

The second nurse, Jackie Lemancyzk, is a carer, a
dreamer. Her white balloon
is going to carry her away, one day.

The third nurse, ID Unknown, is more earnest.
She tussles with her white balloon,
legs akimbo, telling it off
for aimless wandering.

The land is scrub, the trees low and gnarled,
their few leaves a blur.
The casa blanca on the horizon
hasn’t been lived in for years.

You always hated my boxes.
The black belt box with its gold lettering;
the Art Nouveau tin of mints from Montreaux;
the red marbled box that held a bottle of wine.

You never understood why I
kept them in my wardrobe. The top cupboard
in the kitchen is always empty. ‘Why?’ you asked.

Then your mother died and you snapped like elastic.
Your breath turned sour and you drank wine
all of the day and all of the night.

Our grief composes itself in the whole space
of the upper body and comparts itself
into packets, boxes
that only then can I throw away.

We must learn to love the mists,
the way they waft through us,
making the day larger
more autumnal,
turning our skins translucent
to soften our silhouette
so that we no longer
block out bits of the sun.