To All Intents and Purposes

I have struggled all my life to never
write about the pepper mill

its corset shape
of common wood
and secret machinery goings-on
of grinding, grinding kernels down to drift
like ash from a chimney

but now I am lamed in the kitchen
now winter slants a window frosted shut
because it knows I am alone
I find it’s not a paperweight, not even a Christmas rose
in my right hand, but the pepper mill
lifting to my nose like a snuff-box

There is not a breath that doesn’t burn
with the invisible

One spring my father’s father sank a pipe
and gassed the warren
His men with shotguns stood by
every freshly blasted burrow-mouth, taking turns
to roll a smoke
until the sun had set
So many houses
built on ground like this – the offices and factories
and mills where lines of women work a loom
to thread the rotten cloth, rags
across their mouths that let them breathe
and I had not seen until now, I had forgotten
how clear the grain is running through the brown wood
how sly the hourglass shape
and the stamp you are never supposed to read
on the base of the pestle, spinning in the dark drum
Cole & Mason, England –
here is my mother
buying her goods from respectable companies
blowing the dust from a tinned Yule pudding
then putting it back on the shelf

I am holding the mill too tightly, I know
if the man comes now he will think I am one of those
women whose fingers need prising off things
the milkman, the postman
the window-cleaner wanting notes
might find me here
still barefoot in my dressing gown
and breathing down a hot black hum

how the raw side of a coffin smells
how the scorch of a gun would taste
at the rim of the mouth, would burn
on the back of the tongue.