Annette the gap-toothed,
You kissed a man & I was born. You gave him
your laughter & he built an empire,

There is an album of all the men
your mother have loved. It sits every
night in the deep silence of the
basement.

If they ask where I am, tell them: I am
wintering. I have secreted small acorns
of sadness in crevices of gnarled limbs
and shall be savouring their bitternesses
on the back of my tongue until the days
lengthen.

we can travel anywhere
she winks, but let’s rest here
in amongst these words
a moment can take a while

I am tearing the peel from an orange gently and somewhere
Far away a tree falls in a forest and we
don’t hear it but the ground does and the birds do

Every five minutes it does its job,
hoovers every inch of her memory,
declutters all pains and sorrows.

And once the father frowned
As the boy struggled to fasten
The drawbridge on his fort.
‘He’ll never be any good
With his hands’ he declared,
As if the boy wasn’t there.

Perhaps the friends of Lazarus, who died
and slipped his shroud, on seeing him might swoon
or rush to hear the tales of that beyond
they hoped and feared to face.