intimations of a change in weather
March, and the evening light
tickles the throat and taunts
of summer. Telegraph wires
silhouette the sunset like a
zip-line for the soul: I can describe
it no other way and believe me,
I have tried. It is the time
of day when I could write
a poem about tarmac. I am thinking
of last summer; I am thinking
of Ada Limón, who will never
stop making everything / such
a big deal, and I am thinking
of the August evening four years
ago when I wrapped up
in a scarf and a girl in short
short shorts looked at me
strangely. I live to premeditate
the changing of the season; for ink-
blue atramentous nights over
the sea that will symbolise
what they need to. I am thinking
of morning February darkness, of
the steaming cups of tea at five
a.m. because it was the year
we all discovered time was a
construct and the days bled into one,
glissando. I am thinking of nights
knelt by water, summoning up
prose poems for the moon. I am
all of these moments, turgid
to bursting, amassed into one.
I am placing you into this life,
invisible beside me; I trace
your silver outline in the dusk.
You whisper when the
novelty falls still. We take
each other home.
xxxxx
Diptych
for Margery Kempe and Julian of Norwich, of the 14th century, women who would have martyred themselves again and again for the one who held them when the world was blind to love.
I don’t think they talk about you much these days
but when they do you are always side by side:
chambered in a cavern close together, names scratched into
memory, twin candles on the altar. Tongues tie you
to each other in this world you walked alone, one in a hole
and one on the road, slipping your way through
the cruellest of hands and the sharpest of tongues
with your ink and your prayer and the language
you shared with your mother. I hope you know how I warm,
Julian, when I hear you call Jesus maternal.
I am glad that you never shied from heresy, both of you,
hands raw to the ground scrounging for scraps
and cocooning yourselves from the slaughter. And
seven centuries later, you feast on manna and
now we say history was written by the victors, by the victors —
Margery, Julian, warriors wielding peace as a sword
caressed in blood, perhaps you knew in your time how this
would come to pass. But this world chisels at
the faith, you see, so they never quite believed you
when you wrote all manner of things shall be well
and maybe we still don’t. I will not ask you to hold me,
your lives were built on holding other people and
your days of the suckling screaming children are through.
But know from beyond the firmament that I
am holding on to you, I am whispering your names,
they don’t talk about you much these days but
I won’t let them forget. I will chamber you together
in a cavern of the mind, and I will tell and tell
and tell them how you saved the world with love.