Magpie

An act of lunacy,
hunting for change for the car park.
Feeling sick and
homesick.

Old men in the queue
talk of an ill wind in their beloved heart
and I’m just wishing they’d hurry up and pay.

A magpie
in the ivy comes calling
and like a pistol draw
I’m searching for the second.

There will be no girl,
and there will be no boy,

tight in my palm,
silver and gold,

your name
is my secret.

I’m so in love with my dead.
My little black love.

My chemistry
is yours.
My blood
still in side you.
This mocking heart
was of little help,
so drown me
in the rush I hear,
in torrents of useless love.

And fag-ash genie interrupts,
a buckled-in smoulder of a bin top rub
reeking of my bonfires,
my foxglove burning down.

I was the body of spring
and maidens milk,
I believed in the blossoming stars
in the garden-dark
of a new year,
and on a skip-stone flash
I made the labour
of wishing
my craft,

when your head lay in my lap
you could hear the twice beating,
I walked with two soul singing.

Oh joy.

How you struck with such purpose,
the heart-stone weight
of motherhood,

and now,
on this tarmac ground
I flinch with every remembrance
the certainty of their ‘sorry,’

their paper towel grins,
dressed ready
as if for clipping wings.

At this moment no one else dare pass.
No one else will grieve but us.
My love, take us home.