Truro

is a tag-on, self-aware, ambivalent

towards anywhere past Plymouth.

It is two-shoulder strap school satchel,

walk home because the bus roof doesn’t

have a sky, humming burrs, dreaming

of its own place where no-one locks their doors.

Truro sits on the carpet, puts a sun and salt-air laundered sheet

over two chairs, says ‘Where better?’ Bathes herself in pebble dash,

sells her drift-wood sculptures at Sunday markets

for the price of a Picasso, nods at sneers.

Truro held my mother in a blanket, slipped a hot water bottle

on to her like a stone until she was buried in beaches,

tucked in the corners, sent shanties scrawled on pillows

to her rising stomach

400 miles and 5,000 days away.

Truro still sings. Still holds out the cocoa like a trophy.

And there’ll always be reasons to surf the holiday traffic,

drop a coin into the whiskey jar for every caravan we count.