Mother: Nature

I’m stuck

In the nighttime-

In the cracks of my ceiling-

In the yellow corridors of the hospital ward.

The Labyrinth; 13

beds, 12

inhabitants.

It’s an enigma.

I couldn’t hold her hand.

She was Life-size plasticine,

Or polystyrene,

Or plaster;

it could be a childhood dream

were it not for the grammar.

Lifeless-size;

You forget that Skin isn’t Skin if it’s cold.

Mother taught me that time is not a healer; it grows.

The stench of amnesia on a drip,

veins of grass. Ants slip

between the seams

of sheltering leaves

that fell last autumn.

I have my own garden now. Pea shoots and blueberries

and Fruit for the worms.

I wouldn’t look at her eyelids;

I would tell her about the trees and build my own eden

for Her roots. I would see them

delving below the garden bed

Circulating tube lines,

searching deeper and further for any promised land.

There’s not enough space in the dirt-

who took it all?

London became an empty carcass:

a coffin,

coughing Business,

suits, and top hats.

Ode to London-

I was born in an empty city.

The trees are hollow,

The bark is a guise.

You don’t notice the skip in the record

until you have something to compare it to.

The way the tube halts just before Brixton-

A seasonal vaccine-

Mum and Machine- screeches to a stop.

The routine of red signals for a dozen more passengers going underground.

I wonder if they saw Persephone in the flashes of electrics

Or Pomegranate in the tracks?

It’s so loud now

I can hear the nutrients

Spinning

in the air. Proteins,

before My eyes,

and yet

I see Nothing.