She’s everybody’s mother now. Our latest
carer from Birmingham has a birthmark
on her chin, wears coral nail extensions
and might as well be a figure out of Grimm.
She calls her ‘mum’ and ‘mother’, says ‘oh bless!’
whatever my mother says, shows me pictures
of her boyfriend – ‘He’s my he/him’ – admires
the penguin blanket. I make her scrambled eggs.
At the Co-op, a cheery voice celebrates
the birthday of the world’s oldest creature,
a turtle, 190 years-old today;
meanwhile my ‘ripen at home’ avocados
still haven’t ripened on the kitchen sill.
ANOTHER BLAST FOR THE ROYALS the papers say.
A long night. The carer’s smoker’s cough,
the humming of my mother’s airbed, the orchid
in her bathroom suddenly in bloom.
