Anniversary
I have only three fingers left,
but I stretch my hand into the bin
where orphaned body parts lie,
waiting to be repurposed,
you might say,
and pull out –
a blue button eye,
separated
from the place where it was sewn
to witness the order of things.
Another go brings up
a torso mostly unstuffed,
but it could be fashioned into something
if we forget that
bobs should follow bits,
and overlook the split, the tufted
and the dangling
thread.
Don’t bite my head off if I make mess of this.
*
That jacket has gone through at the elbows
Dear – your pointy bones! My leather miniskirt
(the one from Ken High Street that I adored)
will make a perfect patch. If I can find it.
And here’s a lovely piece of white silk –
my first wedding dress, gone yellow
at the hem, but cut that off, and there’ll be enough
to make a christening gown or two.
A shoe, look, quite a small one, and my feet
have spread, but it should fit if I cut off my toes.
There might be one that looks almost the same –
then we could cobble together a sort of pair.
*
Dolly has a new head,
and when she takes it off
her hair stands up on end,
her brain begins to shuffle
from one foot to the other.
Do brains have feet?
(A heart can leap.)
*
It is snowing, straight down quick
in broken lines, but does not settle.
Still it falls, and falls, leaving
no place for us to place
our buckled feet without getting wet.
We’ll keep on though, without the need
for looking back. Anyway,
there will be nothing to see,
just melting snow.
Rachel Goodman has taken the scenic route to becoming a poet. She has been variously an actor, mime artist, theatre producer, radio traffic announcer, journalist, presenter, mother and portrait painter. She is still the last two.