Diana Hendry
all Diana's poetry books (i.e. Making Blue, Borderers, Late Late & Other Whodunnits, Twelve Lilts, and Sparks! are availabe from Mariscat Press (click on the name, or see Links)
Reading in Bed
Best bonus of the solitary life,
late hours, the stack beside the bed as good
as a new lover any night. But now
there’s all the courtesies to do, of bed-
side lights and sex and sleep and who’s the first
to shut up shop. Tonight it’s me. Your thrill-
er, Scorcher, clearly is. I snuggle in,
conscious that you’re close but miles away
(in Florida, to be precise). I lie
and listen as the turn of pages slows
down time. The hush-hush sound your thumb’s rub makes
is like the lap of waves that lulls me off,
tucked up in self while you, on night watch, learn
whodunnit, why and when and worlds roll by.
Why it took so long
You were otherwise occupied
and so, in a thistledown way, was I.
Also living in the wrong town
and not done with the lunacies of youth
or the worse ones of middle age.
There were children, of course,
taking priority in energy, money, love,
and books to write and much mellowing
and tenderising of the heart to be done
and all the impedimenta of history,
fantasy, expectation to ditch,
and the fire wall to take down,
and the barbed-wire brambles to snip,
and the breast plate to strip,
and the look-out to drug,
and one’s mother to silence,
and one’s cover to blow,
and one’s heart to risk.
Even so, when my waist was slim
and my hair still brown,
where were you?
(From Late Love & Other Whodunnits, Peterloo/Mariscat 2008)
Copyright Diana Hendry 2010 Website by fdmedia