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mother

BATHING AT LLANDDWYN

I watch the three generations – mother,

daughter, grand daughter – walk, hand-in-hand, in

toddler steps, to the sea’s edge, and paddle

in the calm, beryl blue waters of the bay.

Opposite, along the Lleyn Peninsula,

over its mountain – The Rivals – with its

three summits, a white, single seater flies,

its engine echoing across this August day.

Laughing in the shallows, they have not seen it.

Their splashing drowns the sound of the plane

absorbed into the distant heat haze.

They turn and wave to me.  I am blessed

by their very existence – their joy

making ephemeral aircraft, mountain, sea.

 

 

 

VISITING MOTHER IN BEDLAM

For all the pretty curtains and the tasteful prints

and the carers’ determined bonhomie,

this is the house of the mad and my mother

a permanent resident.

 

Sane, she was aggressive. She is docile now.

She was unsociable, sane. Now she smarms –

at folk she’d once have considered common.

 

She thinks I am dead or my long dead father.

You’re a nurse or her daughter. Alzheimer’s

is the ultimate in wish fulfilment.

 

The deranged have no beauty or dignity, only

the trick of absolute exclusion. Yet you move

amongst these ghosts with such brave, loving

surefootedness. Je suis desolé!