Poetry

Three poems

This New Way

I don’t understand this new way

of living. Buying a house then razing it.

Even the grass. So everything

is new. Everything

is not new. Is it

a relentless flight from

ourselves?

I was always told

I was weak.

Not anymore.

I’ve got a floodlight trained

on my darkness,

and I’m going in.

Don’t wait up for me.

Little Fish Are Sweet

I wish I could remember when my mother

said it, about whom and why.

She said it often, with feeling:

in the sense of taking small bites,

like a piranha out of its adversary,

but slowly, more like a crocodile does with a body,

storing it on a subterranean shelf.

Imagine my surprise when I consult the meaning:

small gifts are acceptable.

And yet, this is another small gift of hers,

remembering her

on my late mother-in-law’s birthday,

a cuckoo’s egg

in a magpie’s nest.

Making Hamburgers for My Husband

I chop onion, garlic and zucchini into tiny pieces;

I hear him say, They’ve got to be SMALL.

I like to remind him what a dictator he’s become.

Gone the tentative boy banished from his Dutch

mother’s kitchen. He’s had a bad week. Sick,

and his mum’s infection is in her bones.

She might lose her foot. And she failed her memory

test — no surprises there — his brother texted the social

workers are on the warpath they want her in a home.

I stop myself saying it’s best she dies now.

Brace for the fly-blown horror of dementia. Last time

he visited, she walked into the room and said,

I almost didn’t recognise you.

This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on March 29, 2025 as "Three poems".

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