Therapy
Take thistledown, hold it in the bowl
of your palms. Feel it tingle
like Spumante.
No, it can’t mend your heart,
but it will float you to the surface
of your skin.
A cure for that dull ache
under the ribs, that beats each time
you long for your child
across the ocean? Find a river
or a canal. Worn stone steps are best,
down to the towpath.
Let your eyes ride a kingfisher’s
quick shot of blue, borrow
a moorhen’s buoyancy;
how easily they dive, come up
somewhere unexpected, sleeved
in a twist of air.
Alex Josephy‘s collection White Roads was published by Paekakariki Press (2018). Other Blackbirds (2016) is a Cinnamon Press pamphlet. Her poems appear in magazines and anthologies in England and Italy; find out more at www.alexjosephy.eu.