Ancestry
The damp had got its
grip years ago
But gone
unnoticed. The heads of the joists
Feathered slowly in
the cavity wall
And the room’s wet
belly had begun to bow
Once we’d ripped the
boards up, it all came out:
The smell atfirst,
then the crumbling wood
Gone to seed, all its
muscles wasted.
You pottered back and
to with tea, soda bread,
Eighty years shaking
on a plastic tray.
One by one we looked
up, nodded and then slipped
Under the floor. We
moved down there like fish
In moonlight, or
divers on an old ship.
-Sean Hewitt
No comments:
Post a Comment