by Sarah Howe
of the conkers I gathered once
when small myself
shucked of their green armour
and placed in
the glass bowl with the silvered
rim to admire
their mahogany sheen. Why am I
driving the train
off the rails? Two nights ago
my son woke
at four in the morning, crying
for me in the dark.
I placed my cool hand on his
forehead, licked
with winter clamminess. He said,
I had a bad
dream, softly, eyes tight shut, like
something heard
in a story. To my knowledge
his first – a concept
I’d thought he hadn’t yet met
in his slender frame
of human experience. The CD
spinning leisurely
in the neighbour’s ruined magnolia
glints its
ambit of tapering sun. As I kissed
his hair I had
a vision of his little head as a nut
or hollow shell.
A day or so later the conkers
issued a plague
of white wriggling worms from their seemingly
impermeable
glossy surfaces. Next morning over rice pops
I asked him
what he had dreamed. I listened like
a mother
in a story, like listening could make it
right.
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