When I peeled back the wax paper, unsheathed
its little throat to stroke mother-of-pearl
faces on my tropical family
standing rigid on their desert island,
ropes looped around stick-thin necks, I cried.
Where are they now? I have lost them all—
their angular skirts and boxy shirts,
their tiny ears and horseshoe smiles.
Here, where they used to build ships, no more
mussel-shell lustre. All colour, gone.
MORAG ANDERSON is a mum of three young adults and works full-time as a dental surgeon in a rural practice in Scotland. She is currently a delegate on the inaugural Arvon Advanced Writing Programme with four other poets. She was recently invited to contribute poetry to the script of Upstream, a short film written and produced by Tim Barrow of Lyre Productions, commissioned by the Canmore Trust, a Scottish charity for the prevention and postvention of suicide.
