Elizabeth Smither

Ukulele for a dying child

No right to write in longhand with a black pen

the stroking words as fine as ukulele strings.

The ukulele pink and curved, the little girl

whose dying is unknown to her, adults presume.

She sits propped up with pillows, plays

with her teacher who has come visiting

sweets in his pocket, if they are called for,

music’s notes fat in the air, and infallible.

And everything is pressing in, before it flees

(how unbearable to live this way forever)

and yet to live would be nothing fairer

with just the ukulele and the giver.

© Elizabeth Smither

Slippers  for Viva

At the last your feet swelled and their shape

changed to a caricature of a foot. How

strangely arched it seemed, the foot

you lifted from your only fit, the slipper.

All you could wear: slippers befitting a mandarin

in maroon velvet with embroidered uppers

the widest size for your stiff high arch

to slide into, without a chance of straightening.

Racks and racks of shoes you possessed

boots and stilettos, sandals light as air

buckles, straps, suede, satin. Surely they

could have assembled into one hybrid pair

fit for your poor stiff foot that seemed

like a dinosaur trying to enter a building

the ceiling too low for the neck, the tail knocking

over the walls, the head like your pointing big toe.

© Elizabeth Smither

The fantasy of the body

Flushed in its lovely curves

its dimples and folds lovingly wiped

no one could complain of the body of a child.

It wakes, full-flushed, and runs

without hesitation from its bed.

Later it grows strong and bold.

But if it were otherwise: if a spirit

were the greater part and being clothed

(in folds and dimples) was a disguise?

What if it were a spirit who ran

sometime before the moment of birth

down avenues of bodily supplies

selecting like a new army recruit

all it needed: skin and teeth

hair and limbs, all the organs

that skin holds in and bone protects?

If it gathered those to make its clothes

since clothes are mainly what we desire.

In reverse they might be handed back:

the failing limbs that need a hinge

the wrinkled no-longer-admired skin

until at last the spirit swims

like a frog in Monet’s lily pond

among the bruised leaves and blooms.

© Elizabeth Smither

Swimming with our fathers   for Beth

You used to swim with your father and

I used to swim with mine. The same

beach but perhaps never at the same time

though that’s a possibility. We’d never met

when, aged ten or thereabouts, we swam

in our ruched swimsuits, our flat chests

with our handsome fathers. Mine

going further out than I dared –

or maybe he was protecting me from the sea –

swam breaststroke in. I saw his legs

snap and open like scissors, his head

regarding me and my dog paddle.

And you, my long-time friend, saw your

father too, floating on his back, but

turning his eyes, time and again, towards you.

© Elizabeth Smither

Tonia’s cemetery

This morning we visited three houses

you’d lived in, decrepit or gentrified.

My knees decrepit, your hair fresh-dyed.

We moved on to two galleries: one hung

whiteness on white walls, the other

was saved by the owner’s black Highland terrier.

Then we drove to your cemetery.

You gave it its name, said

that though you had not yet a plot

one would be available, being country

and sparsely used. There was one grave there

new-mounded up, crowned with white flowers

so raised it could have been two lovers

under winter bedclothes, wrapped

in detumescence in each other’s arms.

You’d expect me to visit, you said,

look down where the earth had sunk.

And I said the same for myself,

though I had no place, certainly

none with such an appealing white gate

like a farm gate, but newly-painted

and quiet consoling trees – I envied

you those – how well you had selected

your place, far better than your houses.

© Elizabeth Smither

Young woman at an open casket

Within the walls of thick white pine

the body lies under a roll-back veil

of tacked-on gauze. Those who raise it

are handmaidens and as ceremonious.

Nothing now must disturb, not an atom

of dust, a flake of skin or a hair

the solemnity of a gesture, the way

we stand by the wood and rope handles.

Furtively but with daring (what can

we bear on a first attempt?) our eyes

marvel at the antique lace collar

the strands of pearls, looped

then the fingers, clasped about the rosary

with such stiff passion. Was it forced

or placed in blue-shaded fingers at the last?

How tiny and childlike the chest.

No one is saying but one crying young woman

that death to come in this way, must have been

the fiercest thing we can imagine, no angel

but iron-winged, obdurate, at the end

determined to seize the life that oddly

defeated it too, as it raced up the body

as if self-administering, self-poisoning

was its silly futile wish?

© Elizabeth Smither

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