Blue Earth

Though my mother isn't religious
    hers is a religion of sorts

Seeing the world for what it is
    the common Starling for instance
    at the back pecking at her bits
    of home-made cake or among
    the broken clothes pegs
    unremarkable but with it's own
   
    noisy dignity in a world
    where we so often rush
    in to condemn or dismiss

The Starling is no fault of it's own
    she would teach
    anymore than you might accuse
    a man of unhappiness.

Life chooses us regardless
    however we may strike the flies
    in summer heat
    with our fists in disappointment
   
As I scratch about for mysteries
    beneath the carpet in the hall

She's clanking a bucket of bones
    across to a brood of struggling fox
    cubs at the back of the tenement
    opposite. Towards a mad dictator
     
      she refuses to be angry
      and simply hangs him out to dry
      with the rest of the basket.

As I consider my mum a swinging
pendulum appears inside our
blue earth

and where it comes to rest
is the world's rebirth