Ode For Two Strangers
Who Thought They Were Man And Wife
(after Elizabeth Jennings’ One Flesh)
Sweet-talking duellists,
Bindweed, a bowl lyre’s note,
They’re shaken together.
The fizzy-air light they smear
Dribbles…
They miss the moment,
Pneumonia glittering through a microscope,
Squashed lungs.
Despitefulness a buried hatchet,
The simmering they cornered
Is drain-slop now
In the blooming, wrong-no-one fairytale book
Of stop-stump, bewildering senility.