Redux 2

Twenty years ago we lay on camp beds here,
at midnight on the bumpy grass,
supine, our saucered eyes scanning a star map sky,
fleeting Perseids teased our stare
our friends proclaiming, keeping score
“there’s one”.

Now everyone has gone
and we are back to heal the past,
with apologetic sticking plaster vows,
but they are gone
and will not return to hear confession.

So here we are, an age past,
to offer ourselves up, naked once again,
holding hands, awaiting
cosmic teleportation or redemption,
both afraid neither will come, or worse
only one of us will ascend to the stars.

A bristle of a breeze feathers our bodies
and makes us more afraid
until the balm of mild darkness returns
and we set off to cross the rubicon.


© Graham Sherwood 8/2013

Maison Mere

This house has many visitors who come to pretend,
to stumble through a new tongue
and try to feel comfortable about doing very little.
Undoubtedly there have been liaisons here,
spurious affairs and perhaps conception
and an end to matters too I think.
The landscape is wiry stubble,
the serene corduroy of vines
and the beautiful adolescence of sunflowers.
All watch the goings-on
with idle disdain in their broken tranquillity.
For her part, for the maison is definitely female
she holds all her visitors safely within sturdy walls
in non-judgemental sanctity,
a young capable chatelaine who has aged gracefully
to become a respected and much loved matriarch,
who still keeps secrets, mops tears and feeds her charges
Themselves still believing another life is possible.



© Graham Sherwood 8/2013