My Mother’s Fingernails

My mother cut her fingernails into points
not straight across as surgeons recommended.
The white nail-edge made a little steeple.

Perhaps she was thinking of carrying keys
the blade outwards between two fingers
which in turn were balled into a fist

except my mother was a great glove-wearer
and never feared coming to her door alone.
Her nail points were a kind of splendour

to me, something between the claws of girls
who admired their nails with undying love
(the polish chipped or a nail broke to shrieks)

and the green scrubbed surgeons’ knife-
edged line, arms soaped to their elbows.
Her nail points made a little speech

between conformity and usefulness.
The trim did not start too low at the edges
nor was the peak too high or ostentatious.

Each fingernail made a little church
with plain windows. Beyond the steeples
of her nails she saw her tasks and revered them.

Copyright Elizabeth Smither 2011