James Brockway
Teaspoons
Today it is the smallest things that seem
that they, like Time itself, will last forever.
Six teaspoons laid in silk and velveteen,
in a box of simulated leather,
present for mother, Christmas nineteen-thirty-two,
(a prehistoric date, I know, for you.)
Tears, unlike our mother, whose ideal
was to have everything under control, including us.
Eyes full of tears she could no longer smother.
What had we done, we asked ourselves, dismayed,
to set off such a show of deep emotion,
such unstaid, unmotherlike, improper fuss?
Mine now for over thirty years, they lie here still intact
while only now I realise that Christmas was the last
she’d share with him - brutal, medical fact
she’d been aware of but knew she could not alter,
keeping the bad news to herself to save the feast,
until our gift had caused even her to falter.
Six silver teaspoons in a heart-shaped box
we’d saved up for for months, something to last for ever,
more enduring even that fatal illness, than dad, old toff
who’d never live to stir with one or lift it to his lips,
laid in silk and velveteen under a leather cover,
that was really only paper time was gently peeling off.
Page(s) 15
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