Isobel Thrilling
Offering
(for my mother)
October was your month,
you loved
its buried lamps,
interred gold,
carried bronze chrysanthemums
at your wedding.
Your brother died aged five,
I felt you’d mourned
at your own funeral as a child,
laid out the treasures
and entrails,
presented a wreath
of bittersweets and mandrakes;
embalmed doll for a queen.
The baby
was proclaimed king
with you as his attendant.
Now you’ve gone aged ninety,
there is nothing
that you cherished,
no ornament or letter,
no piece of your life wrapped
in careful silk
to flower at the light.
You lived
as a refugee stripped
even of tears,
love hung like a stone
in your throat.
Outside, the magnolia
stacks its cabinet of cups;
precarious clay.
Page(s) 44-45
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