THIS CHRISTMAS, HER BIRTHDAY, THEN ME by David Erdos - Poem 20 from THE PEOPLES PRISON
Poem 20 from THE PEOPLES PRISON
THIS CHRISTMAS, HER BIRTHDAY, THEN ME
Every
Christmas, my Mum would make a sausage meat
Stuffing. It
was the thing I most wanted, as until my forties
It was
something she’d do just for me. When she died
One of these –
a small loaf - had been left in her freezer;
A final fee to
God as landlord and gourmet, made
In my kitchen
as part of her last and lost tenancy.
At the end of
this week eight years on, I will re-imagine
Her present
and effort, seeing her as she cooked,
Full of
cancer, mind removed from her horror,
As she mixed
and kneaded, and overturned last
Sensations
with her hands in the bland sausage meat.
She would add
something: Matzohmeal, ketchup perhaps,
The yolk of an
egg, and diced onion, and some extra
Aspect as, one
eyebrow raised she worked on,
Employing part
of the process of life, in which parents
Care for their
children, at whatever age, without eyebrows,
Or with her
eyebrows thin, as fat shone, spurring
The heat and
the hurt under which I now labour,
As I live
without it, both the stuffing of course,
And her touch
that came through the dish.
The places
where the crust stuck to the foil looked
Like writing;
messages in the method of this sweet
Meat loaf,
missed so much. She would be making it
As I write, if
she’d lived, close to her oncoming birthday.
She would have
been eighty two and still strident
Placing love’s
adoration and language into a greased
Bowl of glass.
I will never taste it again. No son
Can ever
really emulate his Mum’s menu. Or, indeed
See her when
she has moved to a place none can pass.
But this has
also happened with friends as they too
Retrieve lost
sensations, and last December’s 20/20 Vision
Has become a
Fifty-Fifty at best. As to where and how
We’ll go on in
either some dream of ourselves,
Or in shadow.
The ingredients we’ll be using
Will put our
memory of the glare of the past
To the test. I
have tried to make it of course,
Just as I now
write my mother. Or, write to reclaim
Her when they
are people this week who don’t see
What I have
been trying to say. But of course,
They can’t.
Screens aren’t mirrors. They do not receive.
They project
you. And they frame you, too.
You’re not
free. Instead you are housed in the active
Sense and inactive.
As the world turns to water,
Mine starts to
dry, spiritually. I miss the meat
Of my Mum, now
that she is air and photographs
And this poem.
And I miss that connection
As I know that
now there are others with whom
I cannot share
fluency. Is death a virus? Ask Christ.
As apparently,
he recovered. But as we all strive
Now through
sickness, will my Christmas gift
Be the sifting
through the crumbs and contagion
Of a former
child’s memory? This year we’re alone
On any number
of levels. I look up.
My Mum’s
watching. She turns the heat up.
Fear holds
fire. Lilian walks into light.
Then, it’s me.
David Erdos, December 20th 2020
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David Erdos |
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