In that retreat you doled out half
your life, beyond the noise
that engulfed the world, you cultivated
silence wild as the nest of your hair.
Edith, terminal daughter, reticent

as a bird, you perched in a chair
that time we came to see you
at the sanitarium, my Grandmother
chirpy with reminiscence about the girl
who kept her at home,

starting a line now come to rest in me.
A biscuit-tin from our last visit
keeps up-ending on the floor beside me, turning out
a voice crying words that stung:
"you must force the spoon or she'll swallow her tongue."