‘I was lonely in the huge bed’

This poem was printed in Under the
Radar
(issue 20, Winter 2017-2018).


Through the straits

There was a great big bed and I was floating around in it
I’m trying to convey to you that the bed was like a large lake.
I was on my own in a very wide bed wearing a babygro.‎

The water in the large lake was completely white
and the ripples were starched. I was floating on my back.
I was lonely in the huge bed and I was used to that.‎

One day I woke and I was in a narrow bed.
Somebody was beside me. Do you know that poem by Thom Gunn
where he creeps into bed beside his sleeping lover and cuddles up?‎

Strait is the lych gate: confetti from the cherry trees in the churchyard.
We sit in the crook of the tree & you astride my lap and we can’t stop ‎giggling.
We’re teenagers again or for the first time I can’t remember.‎

Even the longest poems end and people get buried.
I gather lichen and inscriptions for this notebook.
I would press flowers but I don’t know how and it’s too late to ask you ‎now.‎

Chris Fewings

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