Today’s choice

Previous poems

Rebecca Wheatley

 

 

 

Muscle memory

He thought his heart was broken yet the day began again.
He couldn’t marvel in the shine of sunsets rising and falling
and yet he rose and fell in turn.
His hands resigned themselves to tea making
and his legs carried him much the same.
He bundled her belongings into bin liners
and his heart told him it was not her in those bags,
reminded him of her wisdom and her nonsense,
showed her soft face enveloped in the folds of drawn curtains.
His heart hammered so relentlessly he struggled to hold on to it.
Caught unawares by her handwriting on a scribbled note,
her smile in a photo he hadn’t seen,
a grieving friend he couldn’t remember.
Swelling and contracting it sounded the rhythm of his day,
asking so much of him that he sometimes had to lay down and hide.
Not broken, conjuring love from the loss with every last muscle.
His heart had never worked so hard or been more alive.

 

 

Rebecca Wheatley is poet, actress and singer in Brighton. She tours her own one woman shows with music and has poems published in The tide rises , Dreitch, Bindweed, Porridge, The New Ulster’ ,Southlight. Galway Review and Salzburg Journal.

Elizabeth Wilson Davies

There are places in Wales I don’t go: reservoirs that are the subconscious of a people – R S Thomas

Cofiwch Dryweryn, that two-word protest,
white on blood-red background, landscaped in green,

Kay Feneley

Some days I must immerse myself in the waters
These days are more than others

Monday 09.06 – a sewage overflow has activated