When I was 4,
My mother’s engagement ring –
not a solitaire from Tiffany’s
or Garrards,
but Egyptian…..
( with a stone that looked like streaky bacon)
lost in a storm drain outside
Nairobi Cathedral when I was playing.

At fifteen in Menorca
My mother-of-pearl pendant,
Oval and engraved with a sheaf of wheat
On a sky-blue silk cord
in the pale sands of Binidali Beach.

When I was 19 –
Three Ethiopian Coptic crosses,
fallen off on arrival
in Central Station, Glasgow
on my way to the women’s Hostel,
at Glasgow School of Art
Then in Edinburgh when I was thirty,
Those turquoise beads
A boyfriend bought me
from the American drug-dealer
which I hid in a sock and somebody stole them.

That Swiss watch from
The African Chief
I taped under a drawer in Boston,
Now in my forties,
The second Swiss watch –
Another gift from the Chief
That I left in a robe at Canyon Ranch
A spa in the Berkshires, Massachusetts
when I was Fifty two and recovering
from surgery.

The aquamarine my husband gave me
Stolen by the cleaner after he died.
His mother’s engagement band
From Denver, left, in a Notting Hill Gate
Bedroom on a visit to London.

Those black pearl and diamond earrings,
To mark the new Century….
A third Swiss watch (!)
Fell off in Princes Street, Edinburgh
In my sixtieth year…..
Lost or stolen – I blame myself,
for carelessness
And I wish it wasn’t my fault.