1. The Island of Doubt
What are these? Toothpicks or cocktail sticks? They are so fiddly. Why are they so
difficult to pick up? What are those sounds on the roof? Birds? Are we near the sea?
Who is that in the photograph? No, it’s not me. I never had my hair like that. Why
are your feet blue? Oh, they’re shoes? I have no feeling in my feet. If I fall, how will
you pick me up? Oh, it’s pathetic, isn’t it? Will someone please answer that phone? Is
this medicine? How is your mother? How did she look? Like you do right now. No,
I’m not tired. I lay awake all night. Can I get there by candlelight? Yes, and back
again. Oh I have been to Ludlow fair and left my necklace God knows where. Are
there still cedars in Lebanon? Are there gales in Lundy? Are they drowning the
meadows? Am I standing in a stream? I can hear water. I am water gifted. I
remember the dropped glass in the stream. The silence was full of birds. Wherever I
am, I am what’s missing. Whatever’s missing is where love has gone. Which of these
voices is mine? Few. But roses.
2. The Egg
I am holding an egg
in my hand.
One of life’s joys.
So perfect in shape.
So simple, yet complex.
But, of course,
I’m not really talking
about an egg.
I’m really talking
about my mother.
The egg is just a portal,
a vehicle merely to talk
about my mother.
Not one of life’s joys.
Not simple, but still complex.
What’s a poem for?
To unlock the secrets
of the universe.
To release the potential
of inanimate objects,
like eggs and mothers,
which are both part
of the same big question,
which I can and can’t talk about
in a poem.
3. Rooms
I am moving through the rooms.
Someone has turned me inside out and now
all my bad decisions are on show.
This juice is good but the beaker is too big.
This machine looks just like the sun.
1… 2… 3… 4…
My arms are electronic.
Twice I fought with the devil last night.
There is ash on my forehead.
The view from this room is nice—
a garden of reflection. Hills.
4. My mother’s things
i.m. Diana Malcolm Cartland, née Greig, 1941-2019
Four Dior Addict 754 lipsticks
(Vibrant colour! Spectacular shine!).
Rolex Depose # Yoke/Sc x1.
A tape measure, pins & needles.
Three Radley purses (empty).
Photos in sepia of her Uncle ‘Jimmy’ Leggat
(a ne’er-do-well from Airdrie),
her mother Jan on her wedding day
& her father Alec in Captain’s uniform in Cairo.
A yellow yo-yo.
________________
Richard Skinner’s poetry first appeared in the Faber anthology First Pressings (1998)
and since then in anthologies for William Blake, John Berger, CALM and Médicines
Sans Frontières. His most recent book of poems is The Malvern Aviator (Smokestack,
2018). “Corridors & Wards” is taken from his forthcoming pamphlet, Invisible Sun,
which will be published by Smokestack in February 2021.