as she idles by the side of the car

waiting for Jack to pay for the gas

and get them on their way.

There she stands in her too-tight coat,

yawning and dishevelled

in the no man’s land of the forecourt,

blowsy as the woman she’ll become,

her back aching with eight weeks to go.

Mercifully bored, she’s thinking only

that he’s taking his time,

of what she might cook tonight for supper,

blind as a kitten to what’s already happening to her –

which is unforgivable, and for the rest of her life.

That’s where the movie always leaves her,

just before the future kicks in,

our pulses quickening as we watch him watching

as she shrinks to nothing in the truck’s rear view

while the driver asks where he’s from, where he’s going.

The China-mender’s Daughter

I want to tell her –

The people in my life are like plates,

I have to keep them happy, keep them spinning,

to ask her Have you ever found

the hard-fired words for pain or love

and set them ringing?

Smiling delicately, she’s explaining

how he’d check for veins of damage

lifting each piece of fine-bone to the light,

how it flared, translucent,

in his fingers – a hare’s ear

shot through with sun.

Muntjac

At the time it felt like a rescue –

her weight in your arms like a hero,

the lack of struggle or blood.

But now in the darkness behind your head

she is breathing quietly, and the sleep she needs

is not in your gift, no matter how gently

you take each corner like a newborn father

coming home from the ward.

Why didn’t you just leave her

among the lost shoes and windshield glass,

concede, there and then, the hopelessness?

The oncoming cars dazzle and pass.

How heavy it is – this brokenness

which couldn’t be helped.

To My Godmother

I thought I understood something

of the pain it caused you,

signing my name each birthday

with love

as if I could remind you

more than anything else.

I thought it was just your daughter

you missed, not seeing

that meant everything

she was missing from,

that thirty summers later

it means everything still.

Forgive me –

I did not know then

how grief works,

how it steeps the clear world

like dye from a red dress

that keeps on running.

The Edge of Something

As a child she’d lived at the edge of something –

a house backing on to open fields

rolling away under a tide of barley

towards a beech-wood where a girl could play

all summer long, out of sight and mind.

Once she’d got as far as a candle’s light,

had almost reached the make-believe trees

where she’d buried her survival kit weeks before

among the roots: a penknife, half a packet

of soft digestives, the doll she’d chosen to save.

Sometimes, slipping out of bed early