page 17

Immediately after—

Immediately after my grandmother died
we saw nothing had ever held her house together—
where we had visited her
for years and years,
the cunning old thing, time’s unresisting
favoured daughter,
the path beside the house
was cracked, not even a path,
the boysenberry vines in the old chookhouse
not a garden,
and what we thought was a house
is only broken pieces of board, making no effort
to lean together.

Along the windowsill in the kitchen, all
those small things
are no longer there for a reason.

My grandmother is obviously not here.
She might be down on the beach then,
wiggling her long fingers down holes in the sand
after pipis.