Redundancy
It left you struggling to sleep, eat,
touch me like you used to.
A night class brought you back.
There, you jabbed at a plane;
its thick, ejected coils looping
at your wrist. Soon, a paper thin
shaving could quiver in your palm,
evidence of a new skill. Tools
spawned tools and we considered
that gap in the garden, paced
its perimeter, mugs of tea cooling
in our hands. The workshop nestles
in its corner, honeysuckle licks the roof
and from a window I watch you walk inside,
know you are bent at the bench, able
and making, sawdust coating you like down.
*Rebecca Goss's first collection, The Anatomy of Structures was published by Flambard Press in 2010. A poem from it was Highly Commended in The Forward Prize, 2010. Find out more here
A version of 'Redundancy' first published in Magma, 2010
