LINES FOR MY MOTHER

Your breath was my first passion,

Your tom-tom pulse

The first rhythm I danced to.

I clung, longer than I knew,

To your umbilical love.

No fairy tale proved too grim

For your guardian-angel comfort.

And when the bedclothes

Failed to stave off nightmare,

You were always close at cuddle.

School would gong,

And clamour rough-and-playground tumble;

Spitfires would nose-dive out of sky,

Flatten towards airstrip zero.

You were always there for me.

Then later, when a tambourine

Ushered-in girls

And strange talk,

The dance began again,

Disquieting, desirable.

I chewed each nail in turn.

And now the insistent tom-tom

Of my own pulse

Draws me back to you,

As I seek approval

On this, my wedding day.

Copyright Michael Newman