I poured soft teardrops
into the pillows of your shoulders
Clenched fists
became open palms
As our weary sighs carried us
to the morning’s alarm
Stretching out
I gave you my embrace:
a warmth to conceal
the salty, bitter taste
The taste of tears
that would not be swallowed
The taste of fears
of remaining hollow
Can we share our sadness
and in the sharing,
turn our sorrow into gladness?
Like the rainbow after the rain,
our joy is only complete
By enduring momentary pain
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
I press my lips
over the sacred birthing room
that carved your fleshy form
out of the norm
from the scar tissue that runs deep
is a mother’s love to keep
I close my eyes
cupping my ear to your watery shell
waiting for your story to tell
And imagine you
in utero;
was it waving or drowning?
Before they named you
you cried out, flailing your arms about;
a tiny miracle of movement
comes full circle
And makes the Earth whole again
You were my source of strength,
shield-warrior princess
That came to me in a storm;
You took me into your arms and made me warm
How, through the loss
I struggle on, each day more
Living in phantom memories,
holding half-open that door
wishing and expectant
for it all to be a dream,
that we could mend our broken ways and gather up from the seams
A perfect reflection
built upon honesty and truth,
To sever naivety
and the innocence of youth…
Time ticks;
A fragile and volatile bomb
You count the seconds pass
And wonder where they’ve gone
Meanwhile the distant and burning
Stars of outer space
Explode
Into particles of golden dust
Giving human life their trace
Stretched over a vast landscape
Of cells and membranes
The pain of birth contained you
Curled up in utero
But you broke forth too soon
Pale and premature
Watched by the expectant eyes
Of the hospital room
A small and tangled up
Bloodied ball of flesh
Craved the comfort
of womb and breast
Covering with baby hands
Its own eyes from the light
Sleep-full and yearning
To fight for its life
She enfolded me into the night
Swift and dark
Her dewy skin seeping into my own
With no threshold to part skin from bone
Cloaked in the marrow of her emotion
She became the walls to my cell
Gathering my tears into an ocean
Crying empty echoes
from a shell
Left on a shore of memories
Where summer forlornly departed
And autumn is now abound;
She picked up my heart as if it were
a leaf upon the ground
Girl on her bicycle
with a graceful air
floral and flowing
without a care
through the summer breeze
I stop and stare
and the wheels keep turning
and pass me by
I watch through windows
overtaking and falling behind
waiting to catch
a glimpse of you again
your dress sailor blue
tailored with a bordered hem.
Home is to sleep
Next to the milk of your bones
My soul is quietened; I am no longer alone
Sheltering in the shadow of your embrace
My fingers trace
The graceful curve of your hips
And my tongue your lips
Take me in your hands and wash me
In the juice of our love
For I know you understand
Time stretches us out
Pale and uncertain
Bathing us in a pool of memory
To cleanse the stain of yesterday’s tomorrow
And all that became hollow
The faithful body
A mere capsule
Emptying and forgetting
The contents of life
From ashes to ashes
Dust to dust
Refusing to believe
There’s a God we trust
Until we recover our senses
Shake off Death’s dust
And be restored to former glory
Let this not be the end of our story
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
Catherine Lucy Rowland 