Poetry / February 2010 (Issue 10)


Stranger

by Michael O'Sullivan

Lying arm in arm, one year on, she whispered:
"Sometimes I feel that you are a stranger,
That I know nothing about this man."

When she made coffee he drank of it,
When he offered burnt toast she ate of it,
When they talked the thirsty dogs barked as before.

Gusts of wind rattled the clothes-horse on the balcony as
Dappled sunlight flooded the heated cars below where
Mechanical diggers sat on their haunches nosing the dry earth.

The sheets they had stained through use were now dry
As the earth and worms that crumbled from the half-finished
Swallow's nest he attacked where it clung to the balcony lampshade.

Homes built from less came undone in these winds.

 
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