Page 50 - The Woven Tale Press Vol. III #11

41
Swan
We live on a river in the country,
we talk gently and listen easy,
we lost our smoky bark and city hiss.
You’ll play me the guitar, whilst I knead dough.
I make enough bread to feed the ten sons
we never made time to have.
You get under my feet when I ask you to
whisk the milk. Stir the gravy. Mind the oven.
We never agree about the temperature, maps and train time tables.
You hold the pegs whilst I hang the washing,
on the line hung between low-hanging crab-apple trees. Our ramshackle garden is overgrown
and there are spiders in the lavender.
The radio plays the shipping forecast.
It’s getting cold. Cold enough to snow.
No. Not yet.
A skein of geese flock overhead,
but you and me, we never migrated apart.
Together we become weathered
and soft as old cotton and as yellow as warm butter. We keep chickens and ducks that rarely lay eggs,
an obnoxious mallard nests like royalty
in an armchair in the parlour.
Of course we brew our own beer
and we grow grass and tomatoes in the conservatory.
Laughter. Yes, we still laugh,
the lines are etched around our failing eyes.
and play cards and drink rum and dare each other to
skinny-dip in the lake by the weeping willow when the moon is high.
Books are precariously balanced on slanting shelves
and guitars are in varying states of loving repair.
Boxes of dusty poetry and newspaper cuttings clutter the stairs. And the piano has a few keys missing,
like teeth and the scissors and your spectacles –
they are on your head, you nincompoop!
Selena Godden