She’d stand in bowls of brine on summer shores, teaching me
to hunt the smooth lipped mussel bound
by cobalt shell, how to pry things open
how to recognise inside the bland smoothness of rock
the braille of the Jurassic; ammonite, trilobite, belemnites
Formed like her coiled plait
with its tendrils of bladderwrack washing against
the collar of her blue cotton dress. She taught me
the hidden millennia, how to speak of hard
things. The violence of opening, that is
what it is to be a mother, to be pried open
to reveal heritage
But now she cannot speak
of the sea but of silence in the rock
Ridged whorls closing ever closer
to the centre, scented of deep sea
brine, time, her fingers clawed and arthritic
Their prying done. My mother
who is not my mother is enclosed within
a hard place, which is not my mother
but an ossified form. Whose dressing gown still hangs
in the closet, whose feet still nestle in her mauve slippers, who lives
in the synapses of my memory of her
teaching me the names
ammonite, trilobite, belemnites
Like benedictions
Only later did I realise these were not
the creatures themselves but the impressions
of the softness of what was. Imprints
of their absence. Today I pry
the mussel, smash the rock, tear
the dressing gown pocket. Screaming
this is what you were
But she is the husk of what was
an impression. She is the rock
of what once was. And even inside
the softness is time swept to an absence
