Taking Edith home on Boxing Day

[jdeirmend]

All through Christmas her lips sharp
over the Daily Mail, dry
of refused, sweet sherry.
And it was: “These days,”
it’s all just take,
take, take,” and, “no one knows me
in the town no more,”
As our saucepans simmered
breathed spiced smells, cabbage,
sprouts, kitchen steam and sweat.
And the husks of bright paper
filled the floors.

Now, she holds boxed-up gifts
in her passenger's lap; the flat
tombola kind: hanky set,
stationery, Yardley
talc. We’ve made little purchase
on her wants.
The aghast, bare shapes
of elms rush by
and raven-crews sweep
the pink earth
for mine-bugs.

Her home, and
Dad gone to open gates.
The door slams, engine fan drones
on middle G for twenty seconds, groans
down.
Alone, history riddles her again:

Jim
their holidays in France,
gloved hands
on the wheel;
administering a border,
sweet Williams, stocks.
His hands on her.
The smell of his pipe,
greasy tweed, molasses-
sweet. They meet and marry over
and over, two gymnasts on a zoetrope.

And though he’s dead these past ten years
she could walk grief-hazed
over a headland
as soon as going in the lounge,
if she were a stronger woman.

A slow progress to the house
she almost treads a homemade candle
with a scrawl-note from Kath’s kid next door.
Dad hands it her, pressing hope.

Yet, when she dies they’ll find it
with their haul, unopened
in tall boy drawer
shut up in her room.

Thanks for the read. There are some very powerful images that are put together in a compelling, fashionable way in some stanzas, but on the whole, the poem paints a scene that is extremely fragmentary and befuddling. If there is an intelligible theme here besides the fragmentary nature of human experience, it is eluding me. To my mind, this absence negates the humanity of the human principle whose moments are being described. Others will perhaps disagree.