I cut myself on love
Held its broken shard to the light
And trembled through the night
In a blaze of fever
I tried to relieve her
But my caresses fell upon deaf limbs
and died there
As she returned them one by one
to their loveless owner
And I carried my burning body
Lamb to the slaughter
sleepless and sighing
across a stranger’s bed
This poem is dedicated to the late Welsh poet Nigel Jenkins.
You wrote your Death
On the periphery of Life
Unknowing that Death writes itself
In leaves that are turned over and over,
Even the lucky-leaved clover
Planted face-first into the ground, soil-dwelling forever
In that eternal Autumn
Whose blood-red leaves never ceased to fall
Caught on the wind in flight
As Death catches us all
You chose to observe from such great heights
And we watched you look down from above
Your best lesson to us in life that
The next greatest to Death is Love
I imagined you
At the origin of the world
Watching and waiting with weary eyes
For your world to be changed
Boy of bloodied birth no longer
But man of womb and flesh revealed,
Did you cry and crumble
At the spot where Nature’s love was sealed?
As you gaze upon your own
Bloodiness, father of the child that you were
Picturing a new innocence
As Life seeps out in a blur…
She met with my future;
I met with her past
Wrapped in hopeful dreams
Now memories built to last
In the stitching of the seams
That binds us together
We walk a precious tightrope:
The time is now or never
To cross the bridges
Leading to a destiny unknown
The territory is far and wide
Yet still ours to roam
Before surrendering to sleep
Suddenly so evasive
Amidst a cold silence
That remains not comforting but abrasive
I wait to awaken in nightmares anew
Another future of formidable darkness
Where the only comfort I won and lost was you
Floating over this salty skin
My mind wonders in waves, crashing against the shore
Contemplating if life could ever be as it was before
As these tears soak
The skin you kissed,
Its taste the sensation
You said you had always missed
But now the gain of our greeting
Is lost in sad goodbyes
Until under another sun
We will learn to run
Arm in arm again
Until under another moon
We will learn to heal the hearts
That broke too soon
Until under another sky
We will learn much more
Than just the simple touch of rain
We will lift up life’s sorrows,
To no longer drown in its pain
Spots of sunshine
Fly over the page
The sun still shines
When there’s nothing to say
In the place where
Silence reigns supreme
I will still be with you
In the fragments of a dream
Swimming in shadows,
Sheltered by waves of peace
There you’ll find me
Scattered like autumn leaves
Under a tree in the shade
(Your eyes squinting to see
At what lies beneath)
Rolled out like parchment
My shapeless form stretches out, waiting
To be mapped by your hands
And coloured blue
In a sea of love that waits to kiss the land
Pain like a sunrise
Greets me every morning
I wake without you
By my side
Your smell still locked
Into the warmth of the bed
Anchors me to its depths
Drowning
The kisses of yesterday
Like bruised fruit
Bittersweet upon my neck
That once lingered now start to fade
As the morning sorrows
Sweetening song
Contained in the mouth of a bird
Ascends and falls unheard;
Didn’t you know that Man’s deadest hour
Is when Nature is most alive?
The Red morning sky
Reveals the shepherd’s warning:
Think more with your heart
And less with the mind
Else lovers fall away; stray and blind
There you are:
Sitting, uncurled
As Curiosity feeds
Your wide brown-eyed gaze
Did I un-ruffle you?
I got lost in your maze…
Those were the days:
Watching your Spanish waves
Unfurl upon the broad
Of your shoulders
A beach of dappled skin
Stretched out before me;
Sun-kissed with freckles
By the sun’s bright rays
And my own tender-meaning lips
Softer still, and still unravelling
My love for you like a lock of your hair
Wrapped around your finger twirling
Unties and unbinds itself from ‘truth’
Instead I tied myself to you…
My body: the work of your interpretation
Translating truth into fiction
And back again
It took a vow of silence
To mend our crooked ways
And still I insist:
I am the tree
That cannot be swayed.
As you stood;
Your camera lens
In childlike poise
Refusing to believe
I am not one of your toys.
Yet still you peer in
Using your circular frame
Whilst I gaze back vacantly
Wondering why
You haven’t
Forgotten my name
As you did
With such charming alacrity
To The Things We Left Behind
The things no matter
How hard I try to forget
Always stay imprinted on my mind
…Certainly unwanted this time
Like an uninvited guest
Whilst I wait to find out
If this silence will stand the test.
Nothing can hold me back
From this life
Even when times are tough
I’ll carry on despite
With no respite
Thinking of you in mind
And wondering
Is it worth my time
When you said:
“Don’t stop believing… ever”
As you made the cord
Between us sever
And end a life long history
Of memories together
But this is now or never
It’s all or nothing
And yet I see nothing at all;
Standing inside the mirror
Reveals the writing on the wall
And shoulders that are heavy
From heaving this burden;
My back will only break
Once they close the curtain…
Catherine Lucy Rowland 