Daphne Schiller
Heritage
I think of my mother
as young and flighty
with irresponsible shoes.
She twinkled like the star
we sang about, danced
to Grandpa’s bakelite wireless
hopped on red buses
full of her friends.
I stroked her dresses
and sniffed her ivory skin.
Father, second son
of a Cornish baker, had a pelt
of dark hair on his chest
when we bathed at Bude.
He swam like an otter
seeking cover from hounds
and their baying voices. He feared
he’d end up as a tiny claw
set in a circle of silver.
Mostly I’m happy,
Home Counties, moderate,
but when I cross the Tamar
into my father’s kingdom
I’m engulfed in silences,
thrashed by Atlantic tides,
leant on by menhirs,
blinded by the great red sun
which rolls like God’s vengeance
into the Western sea.
Then I know my place
with slate and granite,
the ululation of gulls,
the conflagration of gorse
at the end of the earth –
where his world is mine.
Page(s) 12
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