Corresponding

 

Day Thirteen

There was a time when I'd recognise words as mine.

Not floating around like party-crashing strangers.

Lost spectres haunting the edges of lost pages.

The poets I read now are well-meaning strangers.

Flourishing, while I look for language that belongs.

To me. A hue of blue to which I might belong.

Now, in a deep-cut furrow, words fly overhead.

I am the company culled by a blood harvest,

Steel bonnet bent. How my table was once laden,

Golden; the fat, final yield of Autumn harvest.

An unseen bird, sweeping swiftly South of last Fall.

I dumbly place a wreath for love's last fatal fall.

These foreign words are an ill-fit potato sack.

I miss the comfy brown brogue of being in love.

If someone wrote words just for me, I'd have them blown

In bright-coloured glass and wrapped carefully in love.

And I'd find some peace, knowing those words were all mine.

And I'd know my worth, knowing those words were all mine.