INVENTORY
Open door, high cistern, wooden loo seat
Harvesters hanging, mangle in passageway
Long key in lock, block of wood dangling
Wall clock, drop-leaf table, pressure-cooker beans
Seersucker tablecloth, jug of Bisto, crumbs
Pink-yellow Battenburg, splashes of dark tea
Row of eggcups with faces, Coronation mugs
On hooks, fan heater, soap rack and nail brush
Crossword, Scrabble, notelets, china pugs
Wooden chest, scissors, four pairs in a pot, bottom-
hollowed chair, tapestry owls, knitted squares
Insulin, flashcards, smelling salts, football scores
Beatles mags, Yeats Selected, record player
Hole in rug, duffel coat, hairspray, Everly Brothers
Fishtail skirt, kohl, mortarboard, Old Bear
Marmite sarnies, greaseproof paper, rubber band
Trousers nipped in bicycle clips, whistling, waders
Model ships, bundle of love letters postmarked Iceland
Slow-worms in the compost, nettles tucked around the roast
Egg and chips, chocolate shaved off soldiers’ rations
Upright piano, sit-up-straight chairs, tall steep dark stairs
Canaries, cages, linseed and cuttlefish, burbling song
Beak scritch and wing flutter, briquetted newspaper
Shopfloor, shoebrushes, Engels, Our Father
Lord keep us safe this night secure from poking fingers
Black knees, curls in papers, legs in drawstring bloomers
Candle out, pillow, quilt, two feet by each ear.
CAKE TIN
You asked me what I would like of yours
Books, pictures, ornaments, jewellery, and
I couldn’t think of a thing, not one thing
As all of it was you and what I wanted was
For you to be always there among it all, but then
You were hurt. So I cast around in my mind and
Pictured, at the back of a kitchen cupboard
An old tin, a tray for making fairy cakes
The one with so many bakes stuck to it and
Turned to tar that the flower patterns meant
To mould the bases didn’t, anymore –
There, eclipsed, was your light cast over
My childhood, and the invisible corona:
Even as you worried it wouldn’t work
That the cakes wouldn’t come out right, I was
Watching the set of your eyes, the turn
Of your wrist on the wooden spoon.
