Granny

where it all comes from....!

Granny

I hold a desert rose
Each petal, an ancestor.
I could never imagine 
a rose could feel like an epoch.

The next thing and the next;

My fingers have been in the cavity 
where a bird held its breath for morning.
Did it sing that day?

I touched my lips to shells 
with skin of porcelain.
They kissed me back 
as if they were still tidal. 

I bone read the body of a fox,
until my hands weren’t blind 
and a vixen bolts
back into the cupboard.

I am butterfly child 
alighting, alighting.
I love the blue deer leaping
the gas fire, this field of marigold
burning. Elephants have been here
and left a bell tolling. Fossils, 
their mummified stories.

The old lady on the landing 
Is proud of all this looking.

I am butterfly child.
My Granny teaches me 
my common name 
then deep in her woods
behind her semi
she whispers the latin.

(me as a baby with my beloved Granny, maybe my first birthday)

I had no idea my Granny was a common Liverpool lass who managed to get an education and learn all about wildlife. She was a naturalist and wrote a weekly column for the local newspaper, she and taught me so much and between her and David Attenborough I became a devotee of our magnificent natural world.

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