Bearing Gifts
You visit us with gifts – whisky,
a bottle of prosecco, flowers,
bestowed with cheerful generosity;
our horizons lengthen, you update us,
upload us into modern life. You offer us
a twist to our old certainties,
kaleidoscopic pieces shaken
into different diamond shapes;
how did that rowdy, wayward child
– all that boyness – turn into this,
a full-grown man, strength rippling
underneath your skin.
By the fire light you whittle us
a wooden spoon, pale blonde curls
of beech lie scattered on the floor
like petals, like confetti.
Diana Cant is a child psychotherapist and poet, who has spent all her professional life working with young people in various sorts of distress. One of the aims of her poetry is to give these young people a voice that is seldom heard. She lives and works in Kent, and has been published in various anthologies and journals.