That open view from the kitchen
and my mother coming through
from the tiny hall with her bag
of shopping from the Co-op
and about to unload apples,
fish, that type of bread we liked
and her memories of her mother
who got them out of flats
where they couldn’t afford
to pay rent in Richmond
and in Barnes – or the river
that looped down below
before it got ambitions
and spread out
to the city and the estuary proper.
And there was
a kind of clarity then,
in the light that came through
the kitchen windows
because it came through
from the sea – and she was
sure of herself in her own way
after all those years and knew
how things might be arranged
on the table that’s now in storage
or on the windowsill
of a house that’s been pulled down,
straightening the cloth
and placing fruit in a bowl.Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips
