We are sitting in my mother's kitchen,

drinking coffee and talking about nothing.

she shows me a box of knives,

the long blades reflecting her face,

the pale colour of her eyes

not mine at all.

she begins to tell me her story,

and I drift past her.  For me,

there is little of England in this house,

not even these knives look like

they have been through WWII, Sheffield Steel

engraved in a crest at the base of each blade.

On a shelf with the poems of Bishop and Owen

is a hockey puck that is Canada for me;

it is a broken leg left to mend on its own,

bruising fights with French Canadians,

and a language I will never love.

How can this be the same as the knives:

my mother says "beautiful" and "pretty,"

while I say "bone-hard" and "black."