Everything Now
Somebody’s mother you recall
in your downtime when hours are small,
called goosegrass ‘stick to my love’
and probably took a buttercup
and held it under someone’s chin,
whereupon it performed next to nothing –
so take bindweed, proliferating
unwanted, unplanted and choking
the fence erected after last winter’s grasp
had wrung the very last gasp
from stanchions of its elder sibling
taking living daylights and throttling.
How you wish you could remove burrs
more easily – it took hours plucking straws
from the knitted sweaters Grandmother
had poured heart and mind over
so washing machines were kept freed up
and acquitted of the day’s detritus –
and now, with Christmas approaching,
beseech them – ‘buy me nothing,
as there’s nothing that I need’,
still look beneath that tree in remorse,
witness tinseled packages there of course
but something of you wants divorce
from everything now. Feel guilt
when you refuse family affairs and refute -
cite belly ache, a football fixture,
midnight mass, ancient scripture,
nothing they can put a confident finger on,
you can’t be bothered to play along.
Sticking plasters cover your face anyhow
on the days you’ve got everything now.
No comments:
Post a Comment