DID SHE FALL...?
Centuries before time, the maiden
had no choice -
life, if you could call it that,
with St. Bloody George,
a marriage thereinafter of
obligation.
Yesterday another maiden - in a
wheelchair.
It wasn’t that George wasn’t kind,
keeping dragons
from her aching bed, sponging
nightmares from her clothes,
smoothing a seemliness across her
public face
with mailed fingers; it wasn’t
that he stacked her
always on leeward shore, out of
the tear-salt spray,
loosening cords that bound her to
the bone-sharp rock,
directing her prisoned eyes to the
lift and swell
of ocean-swinging gulls, engaging
in their strength;
but that he rode through her
screaming sky too proudly,
righteously, dragged the blood-red
banner of duty
over the furious sun, eclipsing
its warmth;
the tethered cross, flogging on
the wind, shadowed her,
patterned her resolution into cold
white squares.
She set deliberate hands to the
quiet wheels,
toppling over the pier’s edge
through sunset flames,
breathing in, for a few seconds, a
fierce hot joy.
...OR WAS SHE PUSHED?
No, not ever that, but...
Demanding nothing, taking
everything,
accusing with his patience,
finding refuge from truth in
silences,
my life lying in pieces
on the timetable of his endless
needs -
not one of them satisfied.
Can I make love with empty
pyjamas,
simulate an ecstasy,
fumble with the cold metal of a
wheelchair,
play with his forgotten joy?
Today I asked myself: what’s it
all for?
I queued on the pier for
candy-floss, turned my back.
At the inquest I shall not
remember
whether I put on the brake.
(October,
1991)
