Transitional Object



It's time.
This year we will lift it
from the sill, find
something else to hold back
the latest wave of books
from school.

With two hands you'll carry it,
take short steps to the car
and one arm bent around it
open the door.

Too small for a boulder,
too big for a pebble
and too smooth to be a rock
this loaf of pinkish granite

will go back
past Beinn Dorain and Glen Coe,
past Kyle of Lochalsh, past Torridon.
We'll bear it to the island
beyond the island,

take turns to carry
the sagged rucksack
to the furthest coast.
You'll feel it,
as unsure if you ever wanted
such weight in your life

as when you were three
and no one thought
you would hug it up
red-faced to the sofa
to claim it your own.

All other toys
broke before it.
When cardboard houses
were ready for the bin
It fell through them,
the same.

It was always there:
the doorstop
at your first sleepover,
the year as a green mountain
among the Egyptian cichlids.

It was just what was needed
to give the doll's patio
an avant-garde look.

But you've changed.
You're ready to send it home.
You're so tall now
and you want to be alone.

Let's take it
to the tussocky edge
where you and I know
how the bed of the burn
cuts through the cliffs
like a staircase down
in the driest summers
and leave it
in a shrill heaven of gulls,

where all trace of kinship
will wash from it
like the chalk
that brought out the dwarfishness
inspired by a belt of quartz.

Then in a million pebbles and boulders
archaeology would find it
no different,
no evidence it was loved
as Ted Ted on the highest shelf
of your room.

When night falls
it will lie dark in darkness.
The next day, whether
sun blaze from its back
or rain drive on sea winds
grass will grow round it,
wire-worm and Carabus beetle
press shelter from its belly.

It will stay there
as unseen and soundless
as the branch in the forest that no one hears,
until you think of it
and imagine one hand
on a ledge of grass
as you scan the horizon,
the other on warm stone.

_______________________

Colin




A transitional object can be anything from the potted plant given to a close
friend on parting to the unecessary prescription that a doctor may give to a
patient from time to time, but typically would consist of a toy or
comforting blanket given to a young child. It helps both parties to manage
the process of separation. (Mary Morton)


QUESTIONS:

1.Would I be better off with the word "cobble" instead of loaf in S3 of this
poem?
2.As for the blurb at the bottom, would the poem be better off without it?