Dining room

 Do you remember when we sauntered

Down Kirlegate

Into the peabody fields 

Of long owl bottomed tablelands

Of sheets of ice over grass

That broke when we walked

Like knives and forks

On the dinner table

A Christmas in the dining room

With the big dark brown wooden legs

And sitting up straight

And well behaving 

Accidents and incidents

Of birth

But in our mother's sphere 

where the 

Birthday parties were

And the weight of those thick walls

And the texture of the wall paper

I can almost touch

The convex mirror

Set in black twisted leaves

And our grandmother

Like a presence known

Without even being there

And now she, our mother

Waves a hand through thin air

Does not fully know

I'm there, perhaps can hardly see

Except on certain days

And times

When the curtains in her mind

Draw back enough

Or align

To allow a polarized light through

And spotlight

In the dusty air

Again back on that table spare

In the dining room

All those moons

Ago

When we were young and her children

And not her adult helpers

But how is identity defined?

Just a shroud a cover over us

That lasts for a certain time

Until we must slough off the skin

And grow

Or change

It's strange, isn't it strange?