LIMINAL

Flat in your bed

like a crushed soldier

when the old cause

has dissolved into defeat,

congealed to history.

 

In here the weather 

is uncertain - it's been

raining intermittently

for days; I mark

your little snores, try

to guess at the interior,

 

imagine a fiction

wherein I could conjure

peace, an alternative

reality where the soldier

finds sustenance

and a sympathetic arm

but this landscape 

is scattered with loss.

 

You turn asleep

and I trace the contours

of a once-loved face

sifting memories,

still clinging to the past.

 

Dreich Magazine, 2022, Editor Jack Caradoc

 

I was going through a bad patch with my girlfriend at the time of writing this and had just been watching an old documentary about the battle of Culloden, where wounded soldiers apparently had lain around outside in the rain without any medical attention. These images and my feelings, kind of merged in this poem.