Birthday - 22/4/02
My mother came to visit on my birthday,
she will have been dead twenty years next year,
so the only gift she could leave was a dream.
A dream of the house she had built for me to grow up in,
on the mountain land dad had bought to die on,
he’s been dead thirty years next month.
I grew up without a mother because she worked,
without a father because he worked himself to death
without siblings because they were doing other things.
My friends rang me on my birthday and said gidday
my children blessed me with smiles, stories and food
my siblings gave me the stony silence of the outcast.
My mother came to visit me on my birthday
the gift she left was rich and luscious
like the flavour of her weekly fruit cake.
A dream of purchasing my teenage home
a dream of renovations and making it my way,
a dream of repairing the past and opening the future.
Mothers can sometimes know what is needed,
at times say exactly that which can build,
other people told me she was proud of me.
My mother called me Doctor Doolittle
as I experimented with the skills of my art
now I’m renovating to grow my busy practice.
The science of my art is the pain of the body,
the art of my science is the anguish of the heart
my mother never understood either.
My mother left me a dream as a gift,
I gave her my memories in return,
perhaps we now dream together.
My mother left me a dream of my home,
my mother left me a dream of repair,
my dead mother left me a birthday gift.
22/4/02
