Two Poems

 Becoming My Mother

I emerge
from my disguise
to be the daughter
of my mother’s eyes

not just in looks
but in my mind:
I wander on a nightly mission
where I search to find

words that make a poem.
My mother seeks mobility in age
just as it is leaving
prowling her last freedoms

in the dark.
I feel her take my place
in talk and laughter
in my aging face

and thought, in all that follows after.
I’m people, words, her humour
with all the spirit she discovered there, and yet
immune from her despair.

In the Orange Tree

They roost all day in the orange tre
Persian cats that stare with orange eyes
twice their body size in feathers.
As lids draw down to close,
their lichen coats become so much their sitting post,
they lose themselves.

They roost frowning in the orange tree
too monstrous to be harried,
not avian, but garden art
some form of bric-a-brac
until they stretch a wing
extend a leg, twist back to preen
what suddenly are feathers,
shake themselves and settle back
eyebrows locked on sorrow.

They roost all day in the orange tree
until twilight transforms them.
Effaced by hush, camouflage and night
they’re eager now and poised
fine-tuned for sight.
Their beak will know its work.
These faithful “oilbirds” will stay
sculpted for their prey to come
and in the mornings
they’ll be back
as regular as sheep
like some appointed messenger
from sleep.