This was a poem I wrote for mum during her first round of chemo and gifted this to her the last Christmas she was with us. It's heartbreaking that today marks the year we last hugged, a year since I said goodbye to her for the last time. You may not be with us physically mum, but you will always be in my heart x
Standing in her concrete garden
Twenty-three winters I have known you
and never have I seen a day of them
I watch your leaves,
which once wrestled with the easterly wind,
shed from their branches
and retract into their buds,
The fruits you bore
have soured and bruised
without the protection of your bough:
worms from the ruined soil of our land
their seeds, left to the waxwing
to be flung from their nursery,
disperse and grow, anxiously, away from you.
The groundsmen who now tend to you
pollute your soil with pesticide –
your stricken roots lap up their poison
Now here you are, bald and pale
in this coldest of winters.
I watch the sun, peeking behind a silver cloud,
and wait for spring to breathe new life into you.