Notes on a Harvest
I.
I am not the child you wanted.
I am the seed and the apple too.
the call and the response.
your baby
by any other name.
your daughter, a thorn in your side.
you do not love me the way you were meant to;
as bone loves muscle.
unconditional and saturated.
stewed and resin-sticky.
I am not the harvest of your waning body
but a phantom limb
still itching.
II.
do you remember the deer on the A418?
your mother was dying
so we made the drive to the coast.
she was waiting there,
unfurling at the tide line,
her hands coming into their final position –
open, a greeting,
waiting to receive fruit.
you were distracted and unkind;
your cheeks dilated with March roses.
we watched the doe,
a stalking flame,
bright and then
snuffed out in your headlights.
you pulled over as she flickered by the verge,
holding against the wind.
you couldn’t drive on,
couldn’t watch an animal suffer –
for something to be right
it must always be done by your hands.
you taught me this long ago.
and now
you will not break bread with me.
you say I look more like my mother each day.
am I only perfect in the throes of your memory?
where I am boyish, enshrined and ruddy,
dulcet in the sea air and sifting through shingle,
in search of hag stones and wishing rocks
to knead and palm until warm.
III.
you grew up at the port of pilgrimage.
you learnt to drive at fourteen, thirty miles from Mecca.
you spat the pits of dates into your father’s French tumblers,
then took your mother swimming in the red sea.
the sun has always looked good on you,
like Indian cotton, and wingtip brogues.
but now you have nowhere to return to,
no stove, no mantle, no charge to feed or water,
no holy step to sling your hook.
whose halls will you haunt when I’m gone?
and I see you now
still –
the ironed creases of your trousers dulled by blood,
unpicking knots of flora, fur and shrub from your fingers.
you leave her, still hot, behind a hawthorn,
neck flung back to a stargaze.
you return to the car,
and wipe your hands of it all
again.
The Fledging
That summer things were different.
The heat came early and you spent nights
thin
and
bird-like
sheltered by the cool crag of my body,
sheetless and whitely shocking
against the June hue of my arms.
We were sisters then:
we had never worked a callus to an even grain,
still found homesickness in the
lavender scented sachets of our sock drawers.
It was all knees and elbows
and hard edges beaten smooth by Suffolk winds.
We grappled and pushed but only when the landing was soft,
when a clover dusted lawn held us in repose.
We never let ourselves become strong enough
to hurt.
But you dragged your feet into winter,
lost your fledgling down for the thick pins
of early feather.
Life began to treat us a little better
when we loved each other less.
The faint impression of grass on the back of my thighs faded.
Now our jutting bodies no longer call for each other,
our wings twitch at the sight of an open door.
The last time we spent a night
laughing all the way to our molars,
you left three red hairs in the twists of my pillowcase.
I pressed them to a braid
and took it to the hollow of a felled tree,
freshly weeping idle sap.
I prayed in my own way:
for your parents to live until they are old,
for you to love until you are able,
and for the sparrows to take this auburn thread
as an offering for their nests,
to tie and untie as needed,
as promised.