Poetry

Small

They held each other because they were in love.
a fox turned to a hare and a hare turned to a fox:
bright eyes and giddy mouths,
they grinned.

Churned and warmer than air, they swam
in water that tasted of browns and reds.

The sky turned itself over and blinked
across the small bay; the air was sticks, light, stones
and the white bite of hot incisors from
split thick clouds.

They unfolded their soft bodies from the waves,
wrapped in wet-warm fur and braced beneath the shattering canopy.

The rain arrives a fist-full at a time;
water runs in Fox’s legs
eyes slurp with blurs of
blues and browns.

The wind hits like it was never absent;
throttled in their throats
backs winced
with the crack of ripped tree bark.

Their forest collapses around them.

I heard these clouds from nine years away,
curled in the kitchen cupboard like a sprat
wrapped up beneath the waves; braced while you
flung words like they might shout themselves new.

You both liked thunderstorms, so the windows snarled their own tune
and the clouds fingered the light switch.
Your breath smelled like loose electrical sockets,
a nimbus of hair hung from every door handle.

I waited, soaked in the dark sounds from the room next door.
I waited for the walls to move, and the ceiling to be ripped from the sky.
Hands against my head, I waited for it to pass.

John Darley