Lucy Hamilton Poetry

Poems from Sonnets for my Mother

You can buy Sonnets for my Mother from Amazon or direct from Hearing Eye, the publisher.

Grapes

No remaining leaves, just bunches of grapes
against the wall, naked and blue; some glossy,
others mildewed, white and seemingly frosty
but fine despite the blemishes and odd shapes.

And later, working where the bank tapers, 
I find the fruits of the viburnum lost
among dead leaves, hidden in spreading moss,
like tiny eyes surprised to see me there. 

Large and heavy, vessel of six offspring,
each night her undressed body amazes me.
scarred with the history a long life brings,

she's small and simple, soft and ordinary;
but in thinking, feeling, acting and believing,
is always complex and extraordinary.

Heart

Time moves backwards when the heart contracts,
John muses as we trail the water’s edge
He says it’s not a scientific fact
but I register a kind of body knowledge

as the words excite a sense of recognition.
Each day my mother’s failing heart betrays
her as she moves toward her last transition.
I’ve learnt to govern mine the other way.

I had to pull against her gravity
to detach myself and not disintegrate.
No, not to abandon her or leave her alone,

just stop her pain and grief becoming my own.
But as my heart now bears a lighter weight,
my love’s a lesser love it seems to me.

Darling

And now the only word she says is 'darling'.
She musters all her energy to speak.
Her disappearing body, so frail and weak,
recalls from childhood a dying starling.

We tried to feed him through the eye-drop tube,
dismayed to watch the milky liquid spill - 
as mum, in seeming breakdown of her will
to live, ejects each speck of pureed food.

But even now I can't suppress a smile.
Once, when asked if she would like dessert
she said 'Yes please' and paused, this gastrophile

to learn what the delicious treat would be.
On hearing tapioca, 'No thanks', she asserted,
'We'll leave that to the penitentiary.'

Being in her Presence

It was the little tongue that struck me most
in mum's last hours, tiny like a bird's,
curled in her partially open mouth, a ghost
of the tool for eating food or forming words.

I felt that impulse to touch one has for something
priceless, something one has no right to touch
and doesn't. But not the awe for some rare Ming
that might be shattered. No, this awe was such

as one knelt before. Thus rapt, I held my breath
unable to tear any part of myself away
as she hung on the thread of life and death. 

I longed to touch her tongue. It seemed to be
the key to understanding the interplay 
of vivid life and dark eternity.