Uprooted from their places in the house
that’s soon to make way for some dream home
or business enterprise, brochures and letters
arrive as forgotten enthusiasms – fading
and patinas of dust make plain the known fact
of their age. I’d hardly recognise the hand
in these calligraphies of blue ink turned pale green.
Repossessing her memories, my mother’s,
after another generation’s settling in,
is a kind of re-acquaintance – as if here
she is again with stories of moonlight flits
and trespassing afternoons at London University.
In the bottom of the suitcase, cushioned
in newsprint from the year before she died,
her vase whose porcelain pattern reflected
in the candlestick table’s polished sheen
by the window on a September morning.
