An important message

I watch her gentle brown curls fall,
her eyes begin to mist and her throat,
coarse and hopeless as she answers the phone.
There has been another tragedy,
one trivial incident which has spun the rest of
her life into perspective. This makes her dizzy,

if she were younger she’d have a cigarette-
allow the intake of nicotine to calm her bones.
But nowadays the smell of smoke,
is enough to momentarily displace her faith.
So she’s taken to reading books,
fluttering their pages like prayer sheets.

Surviving in a half-way house of reality and dream,
trying to ignore the build-up of dust,
and his ageing pessimism.
The hurt of seeing things for the first time,
and before now she’d been a mother,
she so struggles to understand this man.