My Parents’ Wedding, July 1975
A rushed wedding, a year after the fighting.
Newlywed Anna unable to finish her breakfast
at the hotel. Dimitri insists she drinks up
her scalding tea or they’ll miss the train.
At St. Pancras, Anna sees the 9:40 pull in.
She can still run away. Dimitri who wanted
to leave in a hurry, grieves an umbrella
he forgot at the breakfast table. Oh, it was
the best umbrella I ever had, he’d always say.
A train heaves along the spine of England.
Two people. A missing umbrella. My question
ringing through years – but what happened in ‘74?
Their wedding photo on flock wallpaper.
The fading of it. Anna unsmiling at the lens.
A bouquet of white flowers – her silence.
In Praise
In my hand, spring and barrel. Arteries of ink.
I’ve lost you so many times. I’ve needed you,
and yet it’s nothing. Another one of you appears,
to be zipped up. Doodled with. Ignored.
I’ve gnawed into you, leaving tooth marks,
as you leave yours on blank pages – on the lines,
between the lines or erased with white-wash –
hopeless love letters, diary entries, lists of to do
and not to do, to buy, to cross-out, to interrogate.
For such a simple thing you overwhelm me –
there’s so much of a person to throw away.
‘Oh! Look! There’s two in there’
I lie with the curve of my belly exposed
and a secret within – it won’t be one but two.
When I find out I don’t hear a fanfare
but a sonographer’s voice lifts then glides
into a surprised melisma of ‘Oh.’ A simple ‘Oh’
as life doubles. In the hospital café I take tea
with two sugars, a sweetness cure for shock.
I eat two helpings of St. Clement’s cake,
everything I say tastes of oranges and lemons.
Dear Lord, am I cut out for this? I pray to a spoon.
We go through names. I eat pickles with chocolate.
On the day of arrival, I’m stoned on pethidine.
Amy Winehouse sings for two on hospital radio
as we hold our bated breath for theirs.
So small, early. Two lives to love, to fear for.
Two cots. Two car seats. Two howls to feed
in the ghost hours of night. The same questions
from strangers. Are they natural? Do you sleep?
How do you do it? As if it’s easy to answer.
Maria Taylor