Keening For Morven Poem by Sheena Blackhall

Even my tit was useless
They said I had hungry milk

The midwife forced your face to my swollen breast
Prized your jaws apart. Prodded your cheek
To kick-start you to suckle

Always we were last to leave
From the special nursery
You, yellow with birth jaundice, me all fingers and thumbs
Worried it'd get it wrong. Worried I'd pull your arms
Out of their sockets, or break your new-born legs
Tugging on your baby grows and vest

That first night out of hospital, my dad in slippered feet
Crept into the spare room; both of us were crying
Mother and son overwhelmed by the battles of birth

He sang us sound asleep
You in his arms, me in my rumpled sheets
The years dissolved- I was his child again
His lullabies rocked us to slumbers deep

When he died, folk said you crept into his bed
Cuddled his clammy corpse, before the undertaker carted him away
As if your childish heat could warm the dead!

At our last supper, your eyes were starry bright
You talked of writing down your life to date
Its traumas, twists, from Memory's black crate

‘Three nights running now I've dreamt of him
My granda, ' you remarked

Later, I found you lifeless in the dark
And thought of slippered feet and lullabies
The way my father held you, like an Ark.