Still in Search of roots

Prompted by a census 1911 search I took a literal journey to my roots.

In Search of Mother

A journey I would not have taken,

Cross border, cross time

Into a past best forgotten,

If not to find the place

Where she was born.

A gap, an ache, a yawn,

In the row that used to house

The Hursons and the Dillons

And the Kirks and the Stewarts.

Their back yards now strewn

With black rubber tyres, rusted wheel

Rims, discarded spares and parts.

Nothing to salvage here

of her beginnings.

Copyright with Cathy Leonard 2018

Too Much String

And on Mother's day a poem for mine
First published in Speaking for Sceine Vol 11
for the Kenmare Poetry Festival 2014

For My Mother

My mother says my granny spent time in the sanatorium

Every day she listened to pigeons cooing

“Eat more, poor things,” is what she heard them say

 My mother has feared madness all her life

Ask her what it means and she recalls

The Black Mariah and pigeons cooing

My granny gave my mother a bar of soap every year

for her birthday. My granny gave my mother away

when she was two

My mother scribbles the figure two and puts it inside a box

then draws a shape around it. The shape could be anything

but it looks like a ball of string

My mother keeps her pain wrapped up tight

Ask her what it is and she crouches

over it…too much string to unravel