Poems

INHERITANCE

Now she’s dead too.
I was on the landline and my mobile rang…
“Gotta go, Mum’s on the phone,
she never rings…”

My brother –
“I’m sitting here with her, I found her here,
she’s dead.”

And so I get to ponder
my inheritance.

My face,
I always had her face,
but I dye my hair, I fixed my eyes
and life’s not spent
in mirrors.

My voice,
mistaken down the line for hers,
but lately I discovered I could sing
and found my own.

Her ring,
always destined mine -
old, beautiful, wrought gold entwining darkest garnet:
an early hint of her flinty self
rejecting convention’s engagement in diamonds -

but my mother’s hands proved maternal bonds.

I couldn’t wear it:
enough to have her face, her voice,
but hands?

I’d thought my hands my own.
My singularity flows through them
into pen, brush, hammer – my tools.
I work and love with hands,
I use them, watch them, guide them,
have them always in my sights:
her ring transformed them
and was a claim too far.






I gave the ring away.

My daughter wears it now
and in her hands
is the only trace of her grandmother.

But there’s something
in her face,
her voice,
her flinty will…