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To my Mum who breathed deep the day she got a good set of saucepans
     in her pantry in 1974.
To my Mum who walked the long tunnel at Woolwich to and from work
     every day for twenty five years.
To my Mum who smiled on Plumstead Common when the white clouds
     were on the horizon and the grey cloud seamless in all the windows.
To my Mum who ate chops and beans every evening to hold off weight
     but who always wore smart coats.
To my Mum who was never quite sure if it was OK to laugh and relax in
     the seventies as the possibility suggested,

          – yes, it was okay,

and every time she did,
there were plastic raincoats in the evening high street,
there was Dionne Warwick and Burt Bacharach,
there were floorboards and wooden stepladders and wallpaper,
there were empty milk bottles on the doorstep,
there was a thin of snow on the housing estate under the green grey sky,
there were bowls of crisps crackers and twiglets for the Cup Final,
there were high sash windows overlooking the Thames,
there were phone wires in front of the skies where she would never go
there were car journeys on wet roads by deep green fields,
there were yellow streetlights of new relationships of new-found friends,
there were bulbous patterns of brown and green to match the seasons.

My Mum cried when it all went wrong but went to work anyway.

 

 

 

————w(O)rmholes________________________________|—–

… part of: mum
cars & grey & Mum & muse & Plumstead & roads & white wormhole: all the while / on a wall opposite / Mum’s flat almost / 12 years after / her death
clouds & Dionne Warwick & sky wormhole: 1968
kitchen wormhole: whey
London wormhole: ‘I asked my Nan to write down her memoirs …’
music wormhole: 1964
snow wormhole: bass and piano
Thames wormhole: ‘in the morning …’
windows wormhole: Rue de Provence
Woolwich wormhole: in 1978

 

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