For Anne in her 50th year
It was our time. A nascent time. To set you in motion, I took long walks. Spring warmth and an aching back. Fields frothed with cow parsley. Under lace canopies, new calves the colour of clotted cream, their mothers on stand by, content, barely bothered by flies. Just the occasional tail swish and some low rumination from the herd. Dewponds in recession. Damsel and Mayfly emerging in dazzling, darting clouds of maiden flights. It was your turn then. Contracted to move but then like a false Spring turning back, to linger on the edge of the womb, anchored, at bay. Hesitant to discard what you'd nearly outgrown. Me holding you there as keepsake. And so the calendar days of May turned over and over until that one torn page. A rather bloody ritual, a begrudging birth, not long before the month was out, when a fierce summer sun had already broken through. Yet afterwards you lay so serene with a dark fuzz of hair; the kind that bleaches and cools to ash.
For Grace’s Poetics prompt “False Spring” and my attempt to write some prose poetry.
PoetryPix 