Biscuit Tins

 

When exotic was a postcard from Brighton,

they kept Polaroids in old tins; snapshots

of crooked, shawled ladies, spines arched

 

like curlew beaks, barely fused by a prayer

of crumbling bones. Shrinking men

stretched in the glare of a lens,

 

scaffolded by braces and a spade;

a prodigal son on the other arm clutching

offerings of just raked spuds, caked

 

in loamy soil and sticks of blush-pink rhubarb.

When sunken cheeks and missing teeth

were relics of resilience, tweed caps framed

 

their weathered skin, the herringbone weave

shiny from summers gone, when summers

were a miscellany of birdsong, church bells and hawthorn.

 

The cuttlefish extract of sepia tones softened maps

of ancestral faces, blurred ghostly children on the move.

With sun-streaked hair and berry stained mouths

 

they scampered off; warm coins clenched in sticky fists,

free as leverets in a scrub of gorse, the air sweet

with honeysuckle blossom.

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Lorraine Carey’s poems appear in Magma, Poetry Ireland Review, Prole, New Isles Press, The Honest Ulsterman, One and Panoply. Runner up in The Trocaire/Poetry Ireland Competition 2022, she has poetry forthcoming in Trasna, Allium and The Alchemy Spoon. Her debut collection is From Doll House Windows (Revival Press)

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