Pauline Flynn, Visual Artist/Poet

The Coroner’s Court

 

When my mother and I came to visit Moira

at the Coroner’s Court on Store’s Street,

 

we entered through blue double doors

into a lofty hallway, almost grand.

 

Our footsteps echoed on the wooden stairs

to her flat on the first floor, where she waited

 

at the open door.

Shuffling ahead into the bleak room,

 

darkened by heavy drapes that shut out the sun,

noises from below, she busied herself

 

with our coats and bags, enquiries about the family.

 

A smell of crumpets warming in the kitchen

crept into the stale air, and when we sat down

 

to tea, her straight frame vanished in shadows

cast by the lamp’s dim bulb.

 

I’d drift away from their halting conversation,

lured by the labyrinth of books stacked on chairs,

 

side tables, the floor. Leather and cloth bound,

soft beneath my trailing fingers –– Felicia Hemans,

 

Mary Webb, Rosa Mulholland — gilded leaves

catching what light they could.

 

On dog-eared pages, notes in margins,

hand-written poems slipped in,

 

her signature,

I scout her out in those books, now mine.