Love Can't Tell You What To Do

I’m visiting my mother in her Dorset home,
-by home, I mean it’s not her home,
it’s anything but - she greets me
like a long lost friend, which I am not.

Here, she is contained
like the other old ladies
and the one chivalrous old man. For once
she isn’t different, so that’s different.

It’s a blast proof room
and can withstand the shudders
of unhappiness; if they get too much
there are games and sherry.

Mother ticks away, she always has,
like a UXB in our basements;
my brother, sister, me, like criminals
after a heist can’t meet each other’s eye.

Then, in the middle of our pears and ginger,
Ma remembers something –
feels the missed step, a giddying
nothingness under her mind.

Now she’s a little girl at boarding school
who doesn’t want to be here
with an outrage of grief so reasonable
if she was anywhere else we would listen.

Why can’t I sneak her into the car
and smuggle her home, a baby naked bird
to drip feed in a shoe box lined with cotton wool?
You know it starts off well but it never works.

Why won’t I break her out
like the tiger out of the zoo?
She could stay in my bedroom,
she would be gentle and quiet!

I wake in the night
listen for her breath,
the swish of her tail
her growl at my door.