Vol 3 No 1 2009
Woe
They threatened isolation, leg-irons
me, manacled, who as a child
only liked the light on at night to read.
Because I loved that rifle’s heft
I’m now a grass, a rat, reviled.
I take my exercise on the rain-logged hill
in scoured light, hunkering around stones
as if they are wind-whipped landmines
thinking, thinking, sifting memory
for joy gleaned when my name was different.
Everything is biographical, I read.
I’d live in a stone house near a pier
with painted window-boxes of flowers.
A girl walks my way carrying a basket.
I lower my book, wrinkling our dog’s ears.
Ian C Smith