The Carer

 

She’s been nipped and bit today by an old girl

puzzled in the folds of yesterday.  As she tried

to feed and clean her, acknowledged with shrieks

and skirls, she was fought against with bites

and scratches. When she was tended and quiet,

she combed her hair, grey strands loosening, floating

to pillow and floor.   Then, but only then, she said,

she became a little girl again and sang some old song

taught to her by her mam.  And she told me this:

 “I could see them there, eighty years ago,

sitting in sunlight, a woman counting the strokes,

and I saw myself in her eyes, so just for a moment

I wasn’t sure who I was, as if I were drawn from time,

or a mother had returned to mind her child.”