February #4

Off the Rails

Good girl mostly,

dreams herself

light and white,

fairy-like.

Shivers, though, 

in the night,

when the red

rises inside ...

Or when the black

swirls around her

and she sinks

beneath its tide.

The demons,

the dragons,

the serpents 

invite her.

Tensing her mind,

she locks out

their fearful 

seductions.

So it goes

for the years

of her growing.

Then, explosion.

The rushing red

can't be contained,

the deadly black

won't be denied.

They froth forth

in cataclysmic

eruptions —

then subside.

Slipping and sliding

right off the rails,

she plunges

down the cliff.

Revelation:

she floats on

an ocean

of wondrous calm.

The voices

were always her own.

She opens herself

to their song.

— Rosemary Nissen-Wade

February #3

The next time

The next time you’re late

I hope it’s for a great reason,

something spectacular

nothing trivial, or mundane

but a cataclysmic intervention

that entirely distracted you

because it was so wonderful

it swept every commitment,

appointment, chore, plan,

timetable away in a tsunami

of delightful experience

and left you just enough breath

to explain eventually with a red face

not from embarrassment but

excitement that THIS could have

happened at all and I will be

so entranced by your story
I won’t mind one bit and I won’t

need to be gracious and forgiving

the way you need to be now

because I don’t have a

whirlwind reason or

breath taking

excuse

just a brain

that loses track

so often

I spend most days

off the rails.

 — Michele Brenton

February #2

Breaking Point

Baby forces herself upon me,

triangular furred head

in the cup of my hand.

"Pat me pat me pat me," she intimates,

smoothing her neck, back, tail

under my palm.

She strops herself to the knife-sharp moment

it becomes too much.

Slashing tail, and then claws

lead to relaxation, 

all tension gone.

I am the cat,

social until I am not.

I sit at a party,

smiling and chatting,

conversation rippling like fur.

Tension builds until it prickles,

threatening to burst me like a summer plum.

I make my excuses and run

to open land or ocean.

The big sky soothes.

I purr until the next time.

— Helen Patrice

February #1

Their branches sharing the air

I should have thought
she says
I would have asked you
she whispers
to bring - you know -
we both mouthe it
pads
They're in the bag, Mum,
I say
You're a mind-reader
there's wonder in her voice
as the nurses laugh
Thanks to your fey Scots mother
I say
but already we're past that topic
because she's been
sat up
to receive dinner.

At home I understand
why it is I can
stand in her shoes -
mostly
they're smaller than mine
but the slippers
I forgot to pack
have been stretched
to breaking point.

— Jennie Fraine