The Not-Parents

taught me things I was not supposed to know. Until he threw

the television out the window

they taught me to watch old films late at night, and to notice

odd things in the background,

anomalies, plot-twists, the words to old musicals, how to be

alone in the woods after dark,

to be afraid of game-keepers, poisons, people at work, visits

from step-children, debt, divorce,

low cloud on the hill, the cliff-edge, a change in the weather

that stops the fire from burning.

They taught me things that I forgot, names of flowers, herbs,

all the different coloured drinks

they kept for decoration in cut glass decanters. How to make

good bread, keep a fire overnight.

How to watch. How to keep very still, downwind, and wait

for badgers under the trees.

That comfort smells of log fires, wet coats, good whisky, cigarettes,

that laughter is a trick

that cracks your voice open, then you spray it with a blue plastic

gun that lets you breathe.

When the stepson and his girlfriend were ‘messing about’ upstairs

they taught me

this was sex, and funny, and no reason to be shy. They taught

me to make pickles, put things by,

to love your animals because when you're waiting for the

ambulance at the end of the lane an

old cat is comfort, to marry someone who makes you laugh,

even if he throws the television

out of the window, then mixes so many pills with gin you have

to call the ambulance.

She taught me how easily we die. All you need is bronchitis,

asthma, hatred of hospitals

and half an hour alone. She taught me grief, all the time I knew

her, for the child she never had,

places she left, and felt she never could go back to. She did not

know how useful this would be

when she said ‘you're a woman of the world, you know what

goes on’ and I didn't know

what either of those things meant. She taught me love comes

in unexpected boxes,

left on the doorstep, fed with a bottle and returned to the wild.

It was love she taught me,

all the bad things she taught me, holding her old cat in the dark

under the trees,

waiting for the blue lights to flicker on the hedges and the pieces

of glass

where they fell among the nuts she left out for wild birds and

badger cubs, the night

the television went out of the window, and she waited under

the trees they taught me

everything they knew about love.

From The Hippocrates Prize 2015: The Winning and Commended Poems, selected by T Dalrymple, R Gross, F Oyebode and S Rae, eds MW Hulse & DRJ Singer. The Hippocrates Press, 2015. B Siân Hughes. Reprinted with permission.