Stand In

Goodbye to the surreptitious bait box
stored in my freezer compartment
sundry tackle and two mended rods
and the tears spent over them.

Goodbye to your help in learning
the lyrics of ‘Owl City’; my aged cat
blithely countering raised decibels,
mock-operatics, mouth popping.

Goodbye to holding the cayenne
and anything of goat in the kitchen
to doing a taster with spork first
and mixing Vimto at forty per cent.

Goodbye to earnest opinions on snippets
I read you from the Guardian, or which
you cherry pick from the Angling Times.
Naive but which always delight.

Goodbye to toe-curling embarrassment
at clothes-shedding scenes in DVDs,
my terror (that like stress, lingers)
at enacting any kind of primal scene.

Goodbye to having to cajole
and tell horror stories (usually mine)
to get teeth brushed and gently correcting
any hint of a same size forever notion.

Goodbye to being a stand-in mum
the only week in my adult life so far
the child-shaped space next to me
has been fully occupied.