A lesson in Chinese history

My mother is practised in the tools
of persuasion—she would hide pieces
of carrot under our potato. 
‘Have a taste,’ she would say, ‘then slowly,
surely, you will learn how to like them.’

Faithfully I ate my carrots, yet
still have severe myopia.  My
sister found excellent excuses,
even a man who dislikes carrots.
Her vision is this close to perfect.

My mother grows older.  My sister
laughs, ‘Just wait till you’re old enough,’ she
says, ‘I’ll feed you boiled carrots—carrots
sauteed, mashed and raw—there is nothing
I cannot do with the odd carrot.’

When I was ten years old we would go
after rain to pick worm bodies from
the hot concrete.  Hold out your hands, I’d
tell my sister, and together we’d
send communities back to the soil.

When I was eleven my mother,
expert with the Chinese cleaver, would
chop earthworms into wriggly pieces—
each a live reproduction, exact
in its sacrifice to my goldfish.

My sister is still six years younger.
She lives in a house in Whitby twice
the size of mine. Each weekend she digs
in the garden, throwing her hands in
the air when she slices an earthworm.

My mother has arthritis.  This is
a disease that only vertebrates
suffer.  Suddenly in her sixties
she confesses a phobia—‘Don’t
tell your sister’ (about worms), she says.