Land has dried its eyes, grown hard
hands and interrogates each arrival:
Where are you from, really from?

If we think we are right
the sun may never set;

Things I did then that I hadn’t done before
 
Asked the neighbours if they wanted anything in my online weekly shop and
Bought yeast, flour, long-life milk and 70-per-cent-alcohol hand sanitiser and
Cut my own hair, even the bits round the back I couldn’t see, and

Elizabeth is hiding in the cupboard under the sink
Small enough to fold between cream cleaner and floor polish
Too big to keep elbows away from wire wool

You wouldn’t believe how quick they grew —
Our babies were men now. Lifting bags of concrete
they rebuilt cities, slab by slab, reinforcing cracks.

I’d asked for this not to be recorded;
this failure on my part, to be a good
parent; 

monkey mathematics

A monkey grabs one nut here, one nut
there, and two more over there.
He counts them with care.

I find six errors in the proofreading manual & the irony doesn’t tickle me.
I am enraged by typos, poor formatting, missing commas. This is my Big Girl Job,
the one I always wanted —

What seems to be the problem ? He asks
in that slightly condescending tone.
Seems,     I think,      Seems.
It seems, I say,
that I have a problem with my inner fish,