The following poems were written whilst I was studying for my BA and at a point when I became somewhat obsessed with the relationship between mother and daughters and the impact they have in shaping us into women.

OLDER

I’m scared of growing old, she told me, standing statue-like

in front of her Mother’s worn mirror. Her head cocked

and her eyes fixed to the lines

around her bubble-gum pink lips. I thought she was old,

but it was only a number to me. Life begins

at forty, Dad told her and winked. About time too,

she answered and I remember seeing

for the first time dark circles cupping her bloodshot eyes.

It just flies by. She sighed and I imagined the Heron swooping

over our house and taking with it, not the Karp and Goldfish

from the garden pond, but picnics and birthday parties.

I thought of how it felt like forty years waiting

for the school bell to ring each day. Never

thinking I would see those same eyes

looking back at me from a different mirror.

My Mother’s Shoes

Scarlett, like the lady your Mother

warned you, you would become.

Clickety steel heels, you dreamt

of foxtrotting down the cobbled streets in.

Ankle-bands with dainty ribbon bows

you imagined roping your bare skin.

Scraps of wages you saved and hid under velvet

in the rosewood jewellery box your Nan gave you.

You stroked the steamy glass of the shoe-shop

window. Promised you’d be back

before the smog settled, before you would no longer

see your reflection in their pointed patent toes.

EXPECTING

She never went to school like the other kids,

instead she stayed home

and heated-up bottles for the twins. Carried

bin-bags out to the backy, watching

the other girls make out with boys;

touching tongues and flushed cheeks. Giggling

in Eleven O Clock Mass on a Sunday. In the name

of the good Lord, Father Marr would bless you. Exchange

confessions for ten Hail Mary’s

because them boys are only after one thing

her Mother told her, no-one would want her.

Father Feck left before she learnt how to crawl. Sold

the Echo in Town and never came home.

On scuffed palms and bruised knees she scrubbed

the floorboards clean. Dragged buckets down concrete steps, day-dreaming

about a husband and the patter of tiny toes.

At the age of forty-one I became pregnant and gave birth to my first child, Dylan. I didn’t write many poems at the time, but below are the ones that I did write before and shortly after the birth.

Flutters

I search through books, pamphlets and cyberspace to discover you.

Find endless diagrams                 and detailed images.

The size of a chick pea,         stumped limbs and tail

silently growing, absorbing        iron and vitamin C, D and E.

On an ultrasound screen I see you ─ the curve

of your delicate spine nesting in my womb.

Today, for the first time, I feel you, feel you fluttering

your tiny fingers and toes inside me.

A MOMENT

Your eyelids are dipped

over an empty page.

Cleft to lip, like a raindrop

reaching the tide of your breathe

moon-belly rising

and falling: a silent tick-tock

resting, your splayed fingers

under a sun-cast shadow.

Unfurling tiny toes, stretching

into tomorrow.

BEFORE YOU

The first time your Dad took you out

without me, the house was silent.

A hush of new leaves fluttered

on the rhododendron branches outside

 

and seeped in through the open window.

The pully pattered against the blinds.

 

The bedroom radiator clinked

and I caught the imprint of your chuckle

 

and thought, before you,

there was a silence that I’d never heard.