Michael
‘A locked garden is my love.’ Song of Solomon
When I think of Michael I think
of ivory, of the epicene torso
of a wounded Christ rising
from a loosening loincloth
with Pre-Raphaelite lilies;
of how he made me stop
so Allegri’s Miserere could pierce
us with its five shivering high notes;
of our complicit smiles,
before his burst of laughter released me.
When I think of Michael I think
of a boy coming in from school
wondering if his mother would be sober;
of a young man, naked in my bathroom,
rummaging in the cabinet for sleeping pills.
I think of a high-walled garden, a cloister
where flowers smoke pollen into thick air;
the five piercing wounds, the nails, the spear;
Michael’s longing to be safe in the arms of Jesus,
to lie with him under a heavy blanket –
but not too close.
When I think of Michael I think
of the different risks our histories permitted us;
how he was stricken when I could not stay
walled up with him in his garden.
The last time we met, he brought wine.
I recall his slim fingers encircling
the neck of the bottle as he poured for me.
Once empty, he set it down on a window sill.
I kept it there for years. A ruined tower.
Mark McDonnell has worked as a teacher, marketing manager and therapist in the UK, Spain and the USA. Nowadays he tries to write a good poem. He has had worked published in Rialto, Ink Sweat and Tears, London Grip, Morphrog, Neuro Logical, Amethyst Review, The Friday Poem and Dreich (forthcoming)