Years And Years
The lithe years, to be admired
for their rare vintage.
The mumbling years, yet to come.
And this last year, squatting
like a horse sitting on its hind,
awkward and unnatural.
A year of bone china breaking
and cultivated bloodstone.
A year rattled and rumpled,
my time spent ducking under
a low beam and falling branches,
the others, in their fine apparel,
living sit-com lives of operatic splendour,
affording sentiments like greeting cards,
the likes of I a chimneysweep,
a poacher on the outskirts of civility,
the one they send for to be sent away.
Who calls, but they will not answer.
Photography © Allison Goldin
Unwell
The nurse keeps mum,
tipping out her medicine,
clinical, clean, our maven.
We’ve returned to the womb,
to a childlike state,
the nurse floating cot to cradle,
purring over cures and tinctures,
disease her chosen medium –
something you can work with.
Day becomes night becomes day…
We go in and out of consciousness
as one would when trapped
in a revolving door.
Mummified, I am sedated,
death’s mystery solved –
life is for the living,
and only then the earthen hospital,
the body bedridden in perpetuum.
Sister calling on her rounds
my gracious angel.
Bruce McRae is Pushcart-nominee and Canadian musician with over 800 publications, including Poetry.com and The North American Review. His first book, The So-Called Sonnets is available from Silenced Press.
Allison Goldin is an artist living in California. Her work is a collection of spontaneous drawings from the imagination. The most common link throughout her art are the semi-recognizable creatures scattered amongst and bringing together the surrounding doodles.
