Velcro souls

to the naked girl toddling on the beach

your're out of sight and out of mind

as momentary 

as the footprints she leaves in the sand 

new dawn, new dog on the leash 

she surrenders in the arms of the present 

to me 'now' is a stranger whose grip-like embrace  

I'd like to refuse 

I close my eyes against 'now' and lock onto 'yesterday' 

when I could still run my fingers through your knotted fur

I want to burrow in that memory like wild thistle tangled in your hair

With claw-like grip

You and I, lock-and-key

Velcro souls 

Punctured

we're going through daily rituals

but life has been punctured

we're not whole

and we're silent on the matter of shape and size of the hole

I look at the same sun- bleached peaks

all is as it was and yet none feels like a present I can own

I want your soft underbelly on the courtyard stone 

soaking up rays 

I want you lapping at the water bowl

Another car, another black dog

the universe has fractured

I can hear the radio signal of 

'my life that should be' 

as if it were a patient 

only a wafer thin hospital curtain away 

I am waking up

with you 

pushing my palm up with your wet nose 

when I walk downstairs you bite my ankle  

and in the middle of the night your claws scratch the wood 

as you can't decide where to stettle

you never stop stalking the dinner table 

all tangled up between our legs

we shout 'get off, Isla', 'get down, Isla' and 'go away, Isla'

but nobody ever expects you to follow commands

your high-pitch bark 

is meant for rallying sheep and completely incongruous in a town house 

and it's always my job to tease out the tangles in your hair 

I'm the one you follow around

as if pulled by an invisible thread  

in this world you always find me

and never collapse at the bottom of the stairs

and I don't have to lift your hips, flaccid like snow

or remember that death smells like rust

another car, another black dog.

Critical mass

By Gub 15th of March 

The thing that was missing 

Is not an absence

It’s a presence

The space that’s empty

Doesn’t feel empty

Unless fullness is met 

A whole is not complete 

Unless incompleteness is known

Time is a yearning gap

That can’t stopped 

And love a temporal force

Which only reaches  forward and 

Not back

The little hand 

The big hand 

Aligned for a brief second 

On the family clock

The miracle of birth 

Is not existence ;

But the consequent impossibility 

Of non-existence

For whatever exists as a preorder 

Was not complete , 

Was not whole 

A full stop without a sentence

Critical mass is achieved 

When what was missing 

Isn’t missing 

Anymore ...

What was 

Is a ‘was’ 

And what ‘is’

Is an ‘is’

And ‘is’ 

Is a what will be?

A subsequent ...

 

For the last time

By Silvia, 17th of March 2021

 

The world spins slow on its axis

I welcome the sun’s acid kiss 

The higher the peak, the deeper the abyss

Skittish lamb, unsteady in a premature spring 

To love you is to live without skin,

Uncoupled from time 

You arrived and I’ve no gifts to bring 

Will you teach me gentleness 

How to lean into the world’s invisible hand 

Secure that in the night of your cloud eyes 

I am seeing my present for the last time.

Blue light

Blue light

By Sil 

Hereford hospital 11th of March, 2021

Under the blue light 

You fold and unfold 

Flesh origami

Five pounds of flailing limbs 

Articulated toes

What is incomplete remains unarticulated  

Life juts upward 

Like it has a plan

A diaphragmatic drum 

Triumphantly pounding 

against miniature ribs 

Through translucent plastic 

I am looking 

At a blueprint of the future

fully arrived, yet half-known 

Your face is turned away 

And your eyes swim in darkness 

So I read you hunger backwards

In your breath 

Fanning fingers 

That curl around our ancestral past

I read your stirring 

The arching of your back 

Your your moon-shaped body has a deep gravity 

And mine is but a giant satellite tuned to a single frequency

Christmas morning

(By Sil, 25th of December 2020

Christmas morning

The rooks sing

Dogs circle the pond

Frosted water-mint

Under a pink sky

I left you breathing

This simplest of facts

Is no longer a cliché

Christmas is a tally of a year passed

Time’s own special attaché

The last twelve months -  

Marbles

That rolled under the kitchen sink

This Christmas morning

The choirs will not sing

And we will not bless each-other

With peace

Beyond disrupted human custom

Life is perpetually at ease

The quiet valley

That grows into light

As night pulls away her heavy train

Inside me a new heart is beating - 

The ghost of future spring