Agoloso Presents - Atondido Stories Agoloso Presents - Mama Mada | Page 51

Mama Mada
(Sadie left as heritage
Her fine-toothed comb.)
Maud, who went to college,
Is a thin brown mouse.
She is living all alone
In this old house.
Good Things Happened On that Day Also by Elizab e th Barre tt
Through a crowded carriage window
as it pulled away, a glimpse
of my daughter. Later that day
a drizzle of sun like ginger honey
on the Dales. From a distant train
a trail of steam hemming a seam of sky.
The village shop where I bought
curd tart and apricots.
A woman bleeding at the leg
picking nettles with her bare hands
from the ground: the way I felt
my stalled heart jumpstart itself.
And then, as I crossed Ivelet Bridge,
the heron which stopped to watch.
At a bend in the road, a hedgerow of stars
opening like white flowers.
Light rain like scattered moonstone
across a wooded scar. That afternoon,
the birds which came suddenly
to my window, scrabbling against the glass.
How I worked my cross-stitch strand
by strand until I slept, needle in hand.
That I dreamed her face not knowing,
then, the glimpse had been my last.
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