I know it’s not actually my mother
Standing close enough to touch
Some granite with two dates gouged out
In Wales confirms as much
It’s someone else’s mother
She looks just like mine though
So in a queue-induced reverie
I rehearse how our chat might go
Once I’ve expressed my surprise
That she’s still alive and fine
We laugh at the coincidence of being
In the same post office line
We talk and talk and talk
As we progress along the queue
I’m happy, writing for a living
Like I know you’d hoped to do
I’m married to that boyfriend
Whose name you found amusing
And, in the way the world is now,
It’s not his surname which I’m using
It still only takes a bar of Pearl’s A Singer
A chord or two of Fiddler’s Dram
And Kildare Terrace, 1982
With you, is where I am
I tell my children all about you
And with any luck
They’ll be passing on your mantra
That pardon’s worse than f**k
If you’d been around longer
I wonder what sort of person I might be
If there’d be any difference in
A more fully-mothered me
We’ll never know, she says
Please tell me about the others
So I impart all that I know
Of my sister and my brothers
Life feels a little stalled right now
While I’m temporarily beached
In that maternal,filial hinterland
A place you never reached
A life’s as long as it’s meant to be
She says. It is what it is.
Now, I need to buy my stamps
But I’m glad we spoke like this.
So we said goodbye, again,
We embraced and then we kissed
I want to scream at her retreating form:
Just look at what you’ve missed
Jemima Laing 