Where moss is gold in the copper pools
my mother dreams her mother on the road,
sitting up ahead, among whistled reeds

and ocean steaming rocks. Up and out
of her hospital bed, her wound stitched
and silvering beneath her night-clothes.

Quietly, she slips her cardigan off and starts
to unravel it, both hands working and steady
until she has teased it apart completely.

And begins again. Famine-road, mine-road,
moss stitch; like grass swallowed down a shaft
the wool quivers up again towards her lap,

her eyes cast down, needles tapping out the work,
its strangeness, until it heals her, the old
movements long clenched and deep in her hands.

I dream them now together in mountain light
leading each other where the road winds down,
and carries on, past where they thought it would end.