from the rainblack ash (a poem)

From  the Rainblack Ash

In the water gardens the day in their hands
is all scintilla and snakes of water
those coiling ribbons of light –
she needs to lap at it like a dog

down on hands & knees
on the slippy oak walkway
then the enmeshing nets of rain in the cherry
in winter sun; the green day

silhouetting them. It’s too much
naming this November ‘spring’
but they do, and do
again: that green water on her tongue

the light reframing itself
over & over till her head
is awash with a Glassworks pattern
in a minor key, brimming


before the crossroads
& on the blind bend
(the pub – the fire, the soup,
what might have been)
 
the urgent words skeining between them
which is not much of a reason
for the hot press
of their side-by-side bodies, though

their brief private joy is; and the vastness of the world
and winter, and the long lonely night –
and that this day will never
be theirs again –

and the crashing horde just outside the doors
of a war they did not choose, and sudden loss
and deaths that are not theirs, but are;


but still, listen, outside now
that one last thrush unspooling song
from the rainblack ash.





© 2005 Roselle Angwin in Looking for Icarus (bluechrome)