In the carpark
I'm startled
by a flight of leaves.

It's colder than yesterday
and trees are *******.

I abandon the footpath,
tread between tiny red
apples buttoning twigs
and dry grass, find
a bird's curled feather
white as snowfall.

She finds no skylight
or space to fly
but dips in and out
of the little door
gathering twig
and grass and snags
of blown fleece.

She circles, plaits,
hatches a nest-worth
of speckled eggs,
fills her box
on the garden wall
with crescendos
of newborn song.

She dropped the" in-law" somewhere along the way:
I was the daughter she never had.

In her last illness we chatted over the phone,
exchanged family news and celebrity gossip.

One morning she asked if I felt better, urged me
to walk with a stick if my legs still hurt,

"now mind you do.."

I promised I'd be careful, didn't bother to explain
I'd had kidney cancer not achy legs.

Details weren't important.I knew what she meant.
A memory had escaped, freed us both

to a warmer place before dementia locked
the doors again,deep-froze the key.

"The tulips are too red in the first place, they hurt me"   Sylvia Plath

Red is a restless diva
pacing in the wings,
making an entrance
as the carmine tulips
of a get-well bouquet.

Red is a strumpet
blaspheming the temple
where caring hands
smooth pristine
beach-white bedclothes.

Red is a snooper
******* her body's
fresh wound, wearing
her flowering heart
as a throbbing corsage.

I'm the first to blunder ashore
******* a cloak around my nakedness.

He's cooking breakfast
as though nothing had happened.

No death on a tree, no empty tomb,
no walking through closed doors.

We share the bread he breaks,
relish flakes of sizzling fish

that juice our mouths, tang
the fingers we lick clean.

We pick bones from our teeth,
bask,full-bellied,and for a while

it's like old times, waiting for him
to speak, arrange our day.

He takes me to one side, charcoal
smoke snagging his robe.

"Simon, do you love me   love me      love me?"
He knows when I sit and when I rise

but is heart-sore for answers
I blurt across the hills, over the lake,

above echoes of ****-crow
only the two of us can hear.

Splattered boots
stand ready, resting
from tied black laces
and muddy roads.

An attaché case
gapes too,
cwtches the photo
of a young woman
with dark wavy hair,
her unframed
forever- smile
focussed on a face
behind the camera
at the moment
the shutter clicked
and clicks and clicks

opening and closing,
packing and unloading,
staying and leaving,
making up a bed
from striped & labelled
winceyette.

Here's a tear
of tissue paper
stabbed urgently
on folded cloth
with random red stitches.

Here's the Star
of King David
pointing upwards,
locked on the blanket
by one steel safety pin.