Errands of Love

I am searching for answers

To the shadows of my heart,

Spiralling in last night's dream,

Where a swollen woman (me),

Is telling lies in a castle,

On a grey, wet day,

Beige tracks outside filled

With puddles from a school

Trip to Ludlow in the 1990s.

A big group of polyamorous Americans,

Including two curly red-head women

And a man I once knew, book in

To the castle, go into their room and

Start to kiss.

Suddenly, in the corner of my eye,

A squirrel runs down the fence,

I am pulled back to my garden,

Where I sit. The fence is empty,

It is long gone in seconds.

I return to the castle.

How have you become

So murky?

So dangerous?

Who are you failing?

A woodpecker starts up behind me

Knocking insistently,

As if someone were at my door and it's urgent.

I scour the rustling bushes,

It stops, I watch the leaves breathing.

My mind waits, then: Look at you,

You will never know your Love.

I fall into its cold arms and I am afraid.

I watch the candle for a sign.

And then! A pigeon lands above me

On the glasshouse roof, so noisy

I laugh, his little feet like a kid on ice.

His chubby body, I imagine filled with

Good food and love, his little risk-taking

Jaunt, the sunshine, it's Sunday, the

Disruption of the peace: I am in love with

The pigeon.

Joy comes from deep inside me,

Like water rising through the roots of

An oak, I sit back and sigh.

I am in the thick of magic arrivals

On the errands of Love.