Lay for the Day 6th June

I.m. Grace Elizabeth Gibbens, 3rd June 1925 – 6th June 1981.

Keeps

Missing a mum
means not knowing
her as she was;
not the loss of

motherly hugs
but lack of her
self acquiring
lineaments,

becoming that
person to love
who resided
unremembered

in the child-mind’s
clutches, the son’s
past embraces.
Two and two put

together from
scattered ashes
can’t fetch you back;
still I carry

the cinder print,
as it were, the
stray traces of
you as you were,

you as a girl,
as the woman
wanting a girl,
and live with it,

drawing on love
as though you lived.

 

 

John Gibbens, from Characters: You & I

The Lay Reader: an archive of the poetic calendar