Poetry

Albatross

This iris is clouded with myths;
the creatures which in fear massed together.
In vain we built a home.

Stretched then fractured, I was lifted up.
One wing my conscience, strung up in the chime
of the bells, the cobbles, the Grand Tower.

Another wing my yearning, buried deep
in bracken lands, where a voice still rests
within the Moors' wishing wells.

Diving past spirits, weightless
I watched, for an instant, an angelfish pass
We fell in love, he left, in a storm

carrying throngs of belief, on rapids, like birds
migrating from mind to body
in their thousands.

I wished to love as an albatross, my feet
upon the channel, cautiously waiting
for the surface to break.

My memories drowned in the pass of
deep water, infantile at least.
Before the elements got restless I once

pursued tigers, in a bamboo forest
swam with wasps, as my bower
breathed the sun, through the earth.

He wrote music, she the world;
I was born to a home.
Intact

Colombine Neal