Paysage Moralisé

There’s more to this three-foot square:
lilac vetch & vermilion
field-poppies, some sort of crucifer . . .

Brown limpets with tonsured heads
creeping over the fish-stink isle,
spongy underfoot, seaweed for grass.

Such stillness in the air. The attic window
is a cupped ear set to alert the house to subtle
shifts in atmosphere: auguries; signs; any tiny
notice of cataclysmic change. . .

      What Part of Me? Sun demands a front row seat above the graveyard through the trees when my mother’s placed in soil, surrounded by her friends’ small talk – She must have sent the rays for us. Women in their Sunday best, men in greying suits...

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.