A poem in memory of my mother, Sylvia Plath

Every Christmas, Frieda Hughes tends her mother’s Heptonstall grave under the watchful eye of a piece of street art depicting her – and the curiosity of onlookers

In Memory of My Mother

My mother’s likeness

Stands against the wall of my departure,

Her bicycle fading into the brickwork

Of the years between my last look,

And my curiosity now as I stop

To catch her vanishing skirts

Below a sign for Hebden Bridge,

Where my father once stalked the hillsides

Wearing the skin of his youth.

Since the Tour de France climbed Cragg Vale

She has watched the world – and me – go by

Through those painted eyes. I leave

For the Heptonstall graveyard where she still lies

Beneath the stones I once formed her edges with,

And plant her with Christmas hellebores.

There are lookers that hover, slightly elsewhere

As if occupied, until I’m gone.

I dig with the determination of a daughter

In the place where my family congregates,

Stacked up on one another and waiting for the next one.