Wednesday, May 10, 2006

The Moment Before The Moment After

Long Journey Home - Monday 27th March.

And we bark at
Sound barriers.
Our ears,
Two pistons,
Working
Like armies
Through the night.

Grateful in these arms,
And spent,
We cross highways
And byways together,
Slipping through
And between,
With light steps
Singing
Towards home.

I will not marry
In a church
With flowers,
And a congregation
Of wide brimmed hats.

I will not
Learn my lesson
Another time.

I told myself
That loneliness
Was for the few thousand
Out there,
For those travelling in space,
For those in submarines,
Deep under water.

But Winter brought
Me here, to this place
With its
Rain stenched walls,
With its unshaven woodlouse.
Dampened, my hair
Sticks in shards
Around
My face, and I
Could be
Inuit, lost child,
Long forgotten dream,
Told tales of
From a golden ladled spoon.

I wrote enough songs
To fill a scrapbook
With my aloneness
Til I said no more,
And flung open
The stony door.

And they all charged in
On their
Grey woolly steeds,
Pointing sword ends
At my nose.

Each said
They were
The right one for me.
They would make
The wrongs disappear

But I sought
A deeper song,
A wily one,
A crueller twist.
I stuck in my fist
And drew out anemones,
All of spring time,
Mud still fresh
On the roots.
And they smelt
Of clean air,
And life
And beginning.
Everything was coming
Up roses.

But we shift a turn,
Lift and learn,
And standing
In this subway
I find the lights
Are dimmed again,
The floor is covered
In grease and rain.

I won't drown.
But I must learn to
Walk on water.
To skim this life
With meaning.

And I'm no fucking Jesus.
I'm no miracle worker.

I watch the flattened green
Run past this tiny window;
Sketches of trees
Barrows of water,
Lifting birds.
Wales, my home,
I am ill again.
Faint, narrow, collided.

I, your willing daughter.

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