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.