John White
She lives with us now so I take her to church.
It’s not the one she knows, but the going reassures
or the memory of it. With her faltering grasp
I turn the hymnbook pages back for her, an act
on both parts – I can’t sing, nor she decipher
words that crowd and jostle, never behave.
I bathe her, an uncomfortable man-mother
sponging where she can’t, or can’t be bothered
like her language, shite becoming a new favourite.
How we laugh as I tut, ‘You can’t say that’.
Things loosen and uproot, a front tooth disappears
she’ll ‘not need’ where she’s headed, leaves ‘with the fairies.’
Our house is an island, rimy, worn. We follow the sun
from room to room, grow young, her bright today as a lantern.
John White is originally from County Derry and now lives in Oxfordshire. Published in the Oxford Poets series (Carcanet), he has been commended in both the Ginkgo Prize and the Magma Poetry Prize (2024). His debut pamphlet, Attachments, won the 2023 iOTA Shots pamphlet competition (June 2024, Templar).
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