The Box

The box arrived—

Crumpled cardboard,

Raw-edged—

Wrapped within the glossy blackness

Of Dad’s funereal car.

Later, unpacking,

I find a history—

My history—

Of mothers and grandmothers:

Overcooked recipe books—

Tough, stringy leather around crumbling

Pages

Tapering towards well-thumbed

Edges—

Their camouflage of grease spots

Leopard-like

Within the corrugated cage.

The petrified wood

Of my great-grandmother’s rolling pin,

Solid as her steel-stern face—

A battleship floating

Above the diaphanous sea

Of her Victorian dress.

She sits still above the mantelpiece

In my Nan’s seaside semi.

Each item carefully labelled

With owner and origin immortalized

In scratchy biro ink.

Each domestic heirloom bearing

The curly script of a generation

Framed by the dusty yellow

Of that marvellous invention,

The post-it note

(The survivor of technological advance,

Its virtual descendants grace

The screen on my mother’s PC).

I peel them slowly, smoothly

From these relics.

Slowly, smoothly

I reapply to the inside face of the box to make

An inventory of items,

A register for each cracked piece

Of souvenir china:

The white and yellow honey-pot

With matching spoon;

The miniature tea pot

(Worth mending, Nan said, it’s genuine Limoges);

The milk jug from bank holidays

At Dungeness Lighthouse;

The rusty sweet tin of icing tips,

Individually wrapped in kitchen towel.

One by one,

I hold these things in my hands—

The familiar blunt fingers and shallow nails

Of proud practicality.

We are already comfortable

In each other’s company:

Ready to collaborate

In the shaping of sugar petals,

The rising of dough,

The rolling of crusts.

The revival of lifeless hands.

The utensils that outlive them.