Three Poems

My mother visits me in hospital

My mother appears at the foot of the bed

making a fine contrast to the nurses.

She is beautifully and elaborately dressed.

All this furniture, she seems to be saying,

is the flimsiest the world offers;

these cabinets with their wilting flowers

and the water jug and glass, the control

panel on the wall like an abstract painting.

Nothing matches the crease of her skirt

or the gloves she takes off her fingers

in mockery of the surgeon putting his on.

I shall have my way with my daughter

I shall bring her out of this place

of bogus and fruitless whiteness

her wound will heal under my ministrations

as the outside world fills up with detail

caught in light and love. She stands

and the sunlight falls from her skirt.

Elizabeth Smither

At the ballet

Fast the pulse of the music, every beat

clear as a little stream running over stones.

Above the murmurous water the ballerina raises

a leg or arm, holds a pose that oversees

all that rushes below. Grace and poise

the fast and slow: one blessing the other

or each extending each: the music goes

on dancing in delight, the pointed limb

describes the arc the water would know

if it were slow.

Elizabeth Smither

Holding hands

Walking behind them in the narrow passageway

I see their hands join while their heads stay high

and I think: equal energies, equal affinities.

Down their sleeves (his jacket, her blouse)

run currents the early evening stars detect

and whose meaning is held in great museums.