Family

Family

Family

My mother has gone and bought herself a piglet 
because none of us comes to visit anymore. 
George has good manners and is clean in his ways: 
he is courtly, thoughtful, easy to amuse. 
He goes to Mass with her, and sits sweetly 
while she trots up to receive. He doesn’t stray. 
She has made a cot for him in the kitchen 
where he turns in on our old clothes cut to size. 
 
One Sunday I call on the way to somewhere else. 
She props him up beside me in the high chair 
and he fixes me with those dreary dark blue eyes. 
When I tell him I’m glad he’s there when I can’t be, 
he answers ‘thank you’ in a voice too like my own, 
then bids me sit and make myself at home.