Carbon Copies of Love (poem)

Carbon Copies of Love

Alone in your back garden,
bare feet cold on the tiny civilised Earth,
I try aloud a dozen different names for God;
blind carbon copies of prayers.

Not that I believe there’s a correct address,
or that anything asked for is lost;
I’m just trying to find the right taste in my mouth.


Some names are ancient, global,
others free-styled halfway between poetry and jokes.


I sat on this same lattice-work cast-iron chair
last year, under these huge sycamores,
which overlook the tidy enclosure,
sobbing at the vision of her.


I ask for grace to tattoo the name you gave her
on my left heel and my lips; Phoenix.


Grace to meet you as you are today.


Alone in your little bed,
bare feet snug under patchwork duvet,
I try aloud a dozen different names for love,
and for what lies between us;
again searching for that taste in my mouth.


Ask for grace to take what I’m given,
by anyone at any time in any way.


Together in the heavy rain,
shoes wet through in the long grass,
picking a rambling breakfast of apples,
fennel, blackberries, cherries,
under fading tongues of oak, ash, beech,
soaking one last time before I leave,


You’d cried hard enough to scare me,
and I’m no stranger to holding grief.


I take in the seeds;
the children we never make
are so much more
than blind carbon copies of love.