Love does what love does best –
keeps itself going in the background
for when it’s needed.
Old Mr Reliable.
Like our black-and-white telly, late afternoons,
the simmering casserole
or my grandfather mumbling prayers
we couldn’t hear, let alone understand
or a child’s bedside light left on. Apollo,
the budgerigar, chuckling into his mirror.
His little bell. My special box
of Caran d’Ache pencils for when I’m ready
to colour in. Look, on the bathroom sill,
that wooden bowl of shells
collected from dozens of scattered shorelines,
its outline only slowly beginning, in the dawn,
to make any sense at all. Or the cat just now,
that I hadn’t noticed
back indoors, springing onto my lap.
Now, as one thought spreads
into the air and into each bone, seemingly
intractable (you can’t go on), another calls:
See the wild horses on the hill?
The wild horses are on the hill.
They’ve been waiting all along.