Poppies

A bruised top lip
rests on the blood pillow
puffed up to receive the wind...

Those spots on the bed
- wine stains, claret spores -
blew through us that night,
in a garden of terror.

Side by side we wavered,
muttering silent prayers
to any attuned god who would listen.

I intoned
Alessandro Grandi's
O quam tu pulchra es
over and over in my head.

You, the beautiful rounded O
I lingered too long on,
lolling my tongue like a stop gap.

In the morning
we rushed to hospital;
the sonogram showed
two ghostly sea-horses
dancing in the merry-go-round
of your womb.

The next weeks were a tidal wave.
You stayed in bed most days,
living in the belly of whale
listening to the echo-squeals
of twin fish hearts
swimming in the pool
of your swollen lump.

They were hauled out early
by fisher's wives,
plumped and puckered,
breaststroking the air

like these poppies
blood-rushing through the dandelions
to breathe the sun.

*Version first published in Three Candles - www.threecandles.org

« Back