Sunday, 15 May 2011

Grief has its uses

Yes, remember the maps and how they were wrong?
There ought to be another language pinned to the grid.

A sudden downfall.  Rods of bitter water barring
a slow cavalcade  of long hearses howling at the sky.
Homeless spirits we hadn’t prepared for. No damage. 

Only the mysteries of separation.   We are never prepared.
An empty bed where someone should be sleeping. 
Fruit in a bowl.  Clouds on a yellowing field.

Fragments of blue and grey and the promise of amber.
The ochre of distance.  A gull at the edge of vision. 
We’re never prepared for the soul when it comes

stretches to the dark a voice about to speak the wishes
we never surrendered, the flesh we concealed.  We are polluted
by our histories. We cannot predict the rate of decay. 

There are no guarantees.  Nothing should happen but time.
Pride, like a goldfish, flashed a sudden fin.  A lid on the mud.

 © Sophia Roberts
All rights reserved

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