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."
Nov 22, 2013
Nov 22, 2013 at 12:55 PM UTC
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."
The sanitarium is St Luke's, a Psychiatric Intensive care unit in Co. Armagh, Northern Ireland. This poem is about my Grandmother's youngest sibling who was both epileptic and autistic.