Our mother's clouds and insects
fly to embrace your clouds
and insects. Her architecture, roads,
bridges and infrastructure
rush to greet yours.
Her molecules on their upward trajectory
entwine with yours, the colour of her eyes,
hair and skin. Her language,

with its past
participles, figures of speech,
the sounds and tremors
which are its flesh and bones
these words go out
to greet your words and
to greet you -
these words
which will never leave her.

House & Contents is a moving meditation on earthquakes and uncertainties, parents and hats, through Gregory O'Brien's remarkable poetry and paintings.