IN THE BAG
A familiar topic, approached from a new angle, in a reader’s poem analysed by Alison Chisholm
Alison Chisholm
POETRY WORKSHOP
MAMA’S GOT A BRAND NEW BAG
It wasn’t what I was expecting – after all, paper bags are for a quarter pound of pear drops, cheesy pasties or dirty magazines.
I assumed you’d be in an urn, but then we’d have had to specify and pay. Instead there you were, presented in crisp, white parchment placed in a cardboard box. A very modern sort of dispatch – clean and convenient, uncluttered by the drudgery of digging.
But where to rest what remains? You slept in the spare room while we decided. Finally agreeing and, looking over our shoulders, should The Council catch us, we teased back the turf and planted you from the paper into the Civic earth: a dead good disposal surrounding your stone.
My sister diligently dispenses flowers at regular intervals. I do neither. My remembrance of you is wrapped fish-and-chip-like in yesteryear’s tab, ashes fallen from the fag-end of a life lived outside the bag.
There are some experiences common to all human beings, and the most significant of these are our arrival in this world and our departure from it. As poets, we need to record intense moments of existence; but because they are universal, it’s difficult to find a way into the subject that has not been covered thousands of times before. We are looking for a new way to describe something every one of us has in common. We seek original insights, a fresh approach… anything that will make the reader think ‘I’d never thought of it like that before’ instead of ‘so what?’