Peggy and George

Before I can put my bag down.
a cup of tea is pressed into my hands,
biscuits topple in a puddled saucer.

I’ve come back to check on George,
listen to the tug and heave of his breath
eased since yesterday. Peggy hovers

making her curious clicking noises
with her mouth. Her loose dentures
oscillate to their own rhythm.

She peers up, squeezes her face.
I’m not wearing the Rimmel lipstick
she gave me, she worries I’m too pale.

They have shrunk over time
to fit into their sheltered home,
squashed together with their trinkets.

She has hardly left the house for years.
Once to visit George in hospital
and for their golden wedding buffet

at the Red Lion. Stooped together
like brackets, Peggy fidgeting
with the clasp of her best necklace.

Guests of honour, the district nurse,
unrecognisable, loosened from her tight bun,
and me with my sunset orange lips.


Commended poem in the Hippocrates Prize 2019

Secrets

My mother never spoke of it,
they agreed it was safer
that way. My father warned us

Remember, these people
have fingers in our lives.
I still think of the night we left,

the scuffle before they came,
my parents whispering,
no time for me to say goodbye.

We were always moving on
never really unpacked,
my name shortened to Anna.

There are no photographs
of us all together.
Missing fragments matter

now there’s no one left to ask.
As a child all I knew
were her disappointments.

While I search for answers
I keep his picture safe
in this room full of words.

Published in Poets Meet Politics Anthology, 2020

Time to Heal

i.m. Dr Arthur Brock,
Wilfred Owen’s doctor at Craiglockhart Hospital Edinburgh

Some nights their words seep through my dreams,
night terrors that drip with slaughter, men caught
on snarls of wire, noiseless dead in the thick darkness.

These men have become like the fragments of their minds.
I coax them to share what they have witnessed in daylight
to help them banish phantoms that stalk their sleep.

Owen often walks with Sassoon down the sloping lawns,
he tells me he is the dark star in Sassoon’s orbit.
I note a growing tenderness between them.

I think of our first meeting; the loose uniform, pallid skin
grey as smoked tallow-wax the spring-loaded startle
at the rattle of a window, the tremor clattering his teacup.

Even his stammer settles when he reads out his poems
as if it were holding back horrors he could only express
on the page. Sassoon thinks he shows great promise.

I wake early thinking of my patients. Mist creeps over
the meadow, wraps slate rooftops. The Firth of Forth
shines a ribbon of light. As if nothing has changed.

Short listed for Wells Poetry Competition 2021

The Boy at the Window

Most days she sees him at the upstairs window,
watching children run and tumble on the green,
his small hands pressed against the glass,

Looking out at other mothers rocking their babies,
soothing toddlers, cradled on the crest of a hip. 
Most days she sees him at the upstairs window.

She tries waving to him, playing  peek-a-boo
with her brolly, hoping for a smile from the boy
with his small hands pressed against the glass.

Once he made faces, squashing his nose flat
against the pane, pulling his mouth in a grimace.
Most days she sees him at the upstairs window. 

A hot summers day, children run shriek with joy
dodging sprinklers in the park. The boy, inside, 
his small hands pressed against the glass,

One day he isn’t there and again the next day.
Someone knows about the boy locked in his room,
the boy she saw most days at the upstairs window
his small hands pressed against the glass.

Published Sideways poetry magazine, February 2022