Deborah Swain

KISSING GATE

Her great-grandfather
(whom she never knew)
was the town blacksmith.

Often, there were horses.
He'd fill his mouth with iron tacks
then spit them out
into blackened fingers
to drive them finally home
into newly shod hooves.

Sometimes there was art.
He'd draw rods of ferrous lava
from the fire
and with the muscular alchemy
of hammer & anvil
release keys and locks
and wheels and bolts-
and the kissing gate!
where his great-granddaughter
would later hesitate, frightened.

For there was always that moment
on the long walk back
home across a memory
of Sunday meadows
when she was afraid.
The kissing gate would swing
then clang shut behind her
trapping her in a different field.
Then she would remember
and feel safe
as she touched the sun warmed
burnished metal
as if reaching for the protective hand
of somebody tied by blood.

THROUGH THE SKYLIGHT

Through the skylight
in a slate roof
slick with rain-
the bright blob
of a shade-less bulb
blotches my retinas
with its phosphorescent echo.
I steer it across
the inside of my eyelids,
chasing its elusive colours,
but cannot blink it away.
Like a film
I project it over
the blind stare of the house
& light up the windows
of each deserted room-
a mischievous ghost
flicking on switches,
mimicking lifetime habits.

The garden backs onto ours.
Pink roses drop
petals on the lawn.

TOAST

Making love
then making toast
one Sunday morning
they caught a glimpse of
other people,
rather like themselves,
long before
they got to know each other
intimately.

THE EGGSHELL BLUE ROOM

The locked bedroom
was painted the colour
of a magpie's clutch
-a speckled eggshell blue.
The night he pounded
his head against walls
built of brick
he really believed
he would smash his way
through delicate chalky tissue
& find only glutinous goo
the other side.
Then he'd swim his escape!

They found him
the next morning
in the eggshell blue room
-speckled red.
He had smashed a way out
of sorts.

THESE RED SHEETS

These red sheets
have swallowed me
in folds the colour of peonies.
They make this page seem
less white, like
the creamy top of the milk.

Your purple scarf, left
uneasy, gaudy on the bed,
still warm and
steeped in your skin-
scent sweetness,
pulls me away from
these blackly biro-ed words
on fine and pearly-grey lines,
(such delicately imposed discipline)
to press my face into
its surprising tickles,
breathe you in and
make whole your absence.

RELIC

If I'd known
you weren't coming back
I'd have waited
before washing
our last sheets and
kept them instead
in folds of tissue paper,
the invisible body print
essence of you preserved
in myriad molecules
of skin and hair and sweat.
X-rays and carbon dating
would prove that you'd existed.

But now, only I can
trace the outline
of where you lay.
And then, only
because I remember.

THE HARE

I knew that you had
seen it too.
Sitting in silence,
wanting to share
our individual wonder,
release our excited child
and meet in common joy.
But I saw it
smudged, and
filtered through
desperate tears and
sniffed indifference;
you saw it,
but didn't, focussed angry
and only inwards,
blind to the outside
images flickering through
the windscreen, onto your retinas.
Chancing its luck,
now! it lolloped
across the road,
all twitching energy
and irresistible life.
Maybe you saw it only
later, as a ghost,
later when you touched
my knee, and
then my hand
as I changed gear,
letting me know
you were back.

You turned on the radio, and
I drove on,
elated.