Ursus Maritimus
Waiting at the junction where I turn left: logical
and you turn right: creative, I take down my guard
gesture for you to. The glass partition gone, I see you are all
nose, the whites of your winter fleece and Northern
hair distract me from snare-eyed suffering.
If we weren’t caged at a red light hiatus
we’d wag our heads and go – run free, gallop as swift horses do
across sugared snow, finger the glacial, part the silver waters
stretching far, a voyage to play at us until I was beneath you,
Orion over you. We’d kill her; the seal, bite off her slick
head, crush at fat and brittle shell, gorge on cerise slush.
The traffic lights spark green and our eyes converge,
the ice screen between us. I imagine your big hands pawing
the steering wheel on the A52 towards home.
Rachael Smart is a social worker from Nottingham with a thing about words. Her short fiction and poetry has appeared in various publications including LITRO, Ariadne’s Thread and Prole. Rachael recently co-edited My Baby Shot Me Down, a women’s anthology which features ten new writer’s work, including some of her own. smartrachael.wordpress.com