I don’t understand your language
but I do understand the tune.
Talk soon.
– – – – – –
Rachel McAlpine
Lover poems
Guinevere and Lancelot cool it
She whispers his name
to the night
and her voice trickles down
to him.
Across the moon
a skin
crumbles patch by patch
as they watch.
Water, water.
Who knows when
these two will blend
again?
*
Rachel McAlpine
If I had a tree
If I had a tree
I would carve it.
If I had a pie
I would halve it.
If I had your heart
I would marvel
all over again.
– – – – – –
Rachel McAlpine
The symmetry of love
Love is God
antique and electronic,
lighting up the logic
of the past.
The symmetry of love
let loose
holds the balance,
keeps the peace.
– – – – – –
Rachel McAlpine
Lovers apart
Lovers apart
spin cobwebs
round the heart.
In the office
did you think of me?
Thought not.
– – – – – –
Rachel McAlpine
Don’t be
Don’t be too hard
on your ex,
who was frequently
faithful to you.
Woo woo woo woo
Woo woo woo woo
singing on the radio.
Yayee yayee yayee yayee
started many years ago.
Not another summer
in a wimple!
Someone roll that lady
in the hay.
Surreptitious
Friendship slips
out the window
when lovers shout
and part.
It may ring the doorbell
later,
when neither hurts
not wants
nor waits.
– – – – – –
Rachel McAlpine
Bliss
One night I shall despise him but this night
he is the great white tame hawk
perched beating at my teeth.
He is the scimitar I carry trembling
down the cliff of my sleep.
One day I shall be ashamed.
I shall speak.
*
Rachel McAlpine
(Title is same as the title of a short story by Katherine Mansfield that inspired this poem.)
Surreptitious
Friendship slips
out the window
when lovers shout
and part.
It may ring the doorbell
later
when neither hurts
nor waits
nor wants.
*
Rachel McAlpine
Poems in the wild—Rachel McAlpine 