Buildings stretching
heavenward
floor by floor
like giant arms
with their corridors
disappearing into a
fading October sky.
I’m an outsider
in an
insider situation
transforming hypothesis
into kaleidoscopic rhyme.

…………………………………………………………………………………………

Highgate, Hampstead, heath and village street weighed down with the earthbeat of an unborn son. I thought you were going to be a girl bought everything in pink had picked names from the Toin . You were to be Madge or Inanna my spiritual child another raven haired daughter to swell the ranks of conscious women. I sprawled in heavyweight splendour on the edge of June pools, sunshine and wind dappling ripples with the ducks doing whatever it is ducks do and the other two children trying to keep away from my bulk. I don’t remember much of those days just groans and sighs from you my huge husband stuck in English summer gloom when you wanted to be painting light and shadow on a French canvas. Apparently we argued, apparently it was the usual death rattle stuff but hormones have this tight veil of forgetfulness that they lay across childbirth. We had the great French water birther to deliver you but he just sat in the kitchen eating sandwiches and talking French. He said he knew what was happening by the tone and tenor of my screams and God did I scream asked for a gun to shoot away my pain ,writhed in a torment not before imagined, promised myself never again. So you were a large sticky boy and in my altered state of consciousness the only thing that sprang to mind was a bear, a small brown bear, so that was your name and I started to fight for you right there and then, learnt what it was to love a boy, threw away the knife, learnt to fight a different battle.

……………………………………………………………………………………….

Now I watch you sleep
like a cosmic elf
sent to guard me.