Lord, grant me…
On hot days, the back door stands open
to the garden, to sudden wing flurries,
sparrow chit-chat. By evening there are
bluebottles upstairs, stupidly circling,
banging themselves against the place
the light comes from.
I have been that dumb
heroic fly, crashing my frustrated self
time and again against the tightly sealed
casement of my mother’s delusions, as if
by the sheer force of my want, I could
open up a window back to a bigger sky,
lacking the wisdom to know it was never
going to happen. And no roadmap
back to a time before, when thresholds
had not been crossed, wrong turns taken.
There’s only so far you can stretch a metaphor: mother/
daughter/fly/defences. She’s gone now, I didn’t
end up twitching on my back
beneath the window. The barriers I battle
today are different, internal; we all have those.
When I turn out the light to sleep
the fly folds its wings and rests.
Rose Lennard has had poems published (or pending) in Ink Sweat & Tears, The Lake, Poetry Village, Stand, Biophilia, The Phare, Dawntreader, and Steel Jackdaw, and has been shortlisted for the Laurie Lee Prize, Gloucestershire Poetry Society and Gloucestershire Writers’ Network.
Note: Title refers to the Serenity prayer: Lord grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.