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Susan Hamlyn

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Shelled Creature

The pulse beats through my hand
on my son’s damp brow, through my arms
around the hot bones of his dressing-gown.
Thoughts of ancient, hidden passions
seem like theory from some other world,
formulae beyond decryption.

I recall that I stood at your long window
and turned at your step, knowing
your hand held my blade of words.
I groped through a blur of chairs
for a safe place to sit and spew
those long-learned lines about love.

How was there time for it? Where
did I find the strength for those
crammed, contorted passions,
wrested out like shelled creatures
from a blind lifetime of compression?
That day and they are distant

as hieroglyphs. Each second pulsing
through us now is now, is now.
That there were times before this bed,
that I spoke words outside this room,
that I fed creatures, once, in shells,
is theory from some other world.

Page(s) 38

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