My Mother

There is a room in my head to which you often come,

Orchid gifts wet with rain in one hand,

In the other your love

Wrapped up in a cut out newspaper piece

You'd saved just for me

Or maybe sealed tight in irregular pots

Of homemade orange jam.

You come in and we quickly leave behind

the thorny rose gardens of our grown up fights

I smooth out the creases in your gentle face

I know I've often caused,

While you, keeping me from the shabby coldness

of the outside world,

Put the last stitch on my coat.

Enda Wyley