Love
The Kiss
I stole your lips before they’d flown
To laugh and whistle while you work
Touched them tender with my own
Then punch in the long days hurt
Countdown the hours –'til you're home
I Blame My Body
When did it all begin,
This new life after the operation?
Siamese twins joined at the hip and shoulder,
We silently slipped behind a warm boulder
Into a deep sleep of comfort and dull routine.
For myself I blame my body.
Bit by bit it moved, adjusted to discomfort,
Without asking permission, without notice,
It all ebbed away.
​
Do we really want to go to all the trouble and expense
Of another operation?
Can it ever be the same again?
Did we really wake up face to face and smile,
Lost in each other’s world rather than our own,
All those many years ago?
Emerald Falls
Stumble ran a snow ice mile but stopped a bend away
Like rushing with the wrapping before the box is opened,
You check that someone’s watching –
It’s not the same without you.
From Here To Home
Thoughts pull me from here to home and then run on
Like paint that panics past a heavy brush​
Into a room where actions speak
And emotions stir the rainbow paint.​
My baton brush palates the score
And colours sing the words out loud.​
I hold the silent matt white sound
And empty in the deafened roar.
Water thins to douse the flames
But just bleeds down the arm again.
The ceilings tough – so cover up.
A Shed Load of Stories
His work tools placed in a toolbox.
My throw- a -ways thrown on the floor.
A plane of planes. A bright, steel blade,
Cutting a swathe through the 1950’s
A tree load of shavings, cutting to the core.
Memories of DIY before B & Q
When there was only time
To measure the blade cutting the swathe
And to spell words out properly
And to do a proper job.
Holding Sylvia
Warm water drops from a cotton ball
Into an eye that has seen out the ages.
Searing pain … she clutches me;
Holding her Carer, her son now her mum again.
Tiny poultice on a dot of red
Held, like a spider held by its web.
Soft brush fingers sweep away –
All tears – all pain –relief again –
“There, there - there, there.”
Here in Sanlucar, I think of her warm brow,
Which soon I’ll kiss “night-night” again,
Before I kiss it cold once more.
