I recall some rusty nails, three or four,
in the top right-hand drawer
of an oak desk in my uncle's house.

And that dull pair of shoes he used to wear,
bought for gardening from an Oxfam shop,
their ancient leather hard as bakelite,

that he wore until the soles were gone.
They were also worn by another then long dead
and nameless, save to strangers far away:

for we felt someone there we couldn't see,
that rose from the life the shoes had led
before they came into my uncle's home.

And when he died I found those hand-wrought nails,
all wrapped with muslin, very old,
and wondered what their hidden history was

and what they might have pierced so long ago.
Then I knew someone else was standing near,
out of sight but with a hammer in his hand,

who reached for me from suffering and love
and knew my heart was lamed and broken down,
like some old horse that's never known a shoe.

When mummy died, daddy married auntie.
She said she'd loved him from the very first
and since she'd known her sister inside out,
would make a fine new mum for us.
She'd even been there at the accident,
when mum was looking down at her new shoes
and didn't see the truck in time.

Once when auntie was cooking dinner,
she told us how pretty mum had been,
how men had always had an eye for her,
though she dressed too much in flirty stuff.
Then auntie took a package from the fridge,
and said that mum had made herself a shroud
when she was young, in preparation for her death.

Then she pulled away the white wrappings
and exposed the pale thighs and young breasts,
and filled the bird with sticky cherry.
Came in very handy that did, she said,
bending down with the roasting tin.
We put her in it for her cremation,
she really looked her best just then, she grinned,
as the oven door clicked shut.