The Carer

May 20

By Terry Jones

She’s been nipped and bit today by a patient
puzzled in the folds of yesterday. As she tried
to feed and clean her, acknowledged with shrieks
and skirls, she was fought against with bites
and scratches. When she was tended and quiet,
she combed her hair, strands loosening, floating
to pillow and floor. Then, but only then, she said,
she became a little girl again and sang some old song
taught to her by her mam: “I could see them there,
ninety years ago, sitting in sunlight, a woman
counting strokes of the brush, and saw myself
in her eyes, so just for a moment I wasn’t sure
who I was, as if I had been drawn from time,
or a mother had returned to mind her child.”