The Beach at Douglas

a photograph of my mother’s family:
they stride through the frame in jumpers,
scarves, anoraks, each in a different direction.
Big Susan caught half leaping, my aunt’s
reaching arms, and Nana’s pointed nose
remind me of a flock of seagulls scattering,
about to rise.

My mother shakes her head fondly
at this photograph, saying what a funny lot
they are, and by funny she means peculiar,
and by lot she means group, clan, collection
of odd souls thrown onto a grey beach
in the ‘70s, with only blood to bind them,
scarves to shield them from the wind
rustling their anoraks, the wind
sweeping the sand into the sea,
the sea onto the sand, the wind
whipping between these frozen figures
held in flight; stopped from scattering.

In the picture, my mother wears flares, round
glasses, and the grimace she makes in the bright
sun, or the face of the wind. She was first to scatter
from the cold beach, the island of wet promenades
and palm trees, bent by Irish winds
where her sister still lives, dying
of decay in her brain, the grey
matter dissolving, synapses faltering:
her thoughts scatter, her hands shake.

My mother, flown across a sea,
an ocean, and stalled on a dry
continent far from the beach,
from anoraks and the reach
of the wind, shakes her head,
says what a funny lot, and drops
the photograph into the scattered pile,
the shriek of seagulls
caught in her throat.

Holly Kent-Payne will soon begin the MFA program at New York University. She lives in Silver Spring, Maryland.