we move ahead
by falling losing balance
recovering it in a step
the children we were once
stood up and ran towards
tomorrow
forward motion
people surging
the flow of traffic
energy in wires
and the power that comes from
weather or sunshine
the swift’s sloping dive
the buzzard’s stoop or water’s cascade
levelling itself as it flows
forward motion
alone at the beginning
we throw caution to the wind
follow as it blows forsaking
each moment for the next
in love at the beginning
we are drawn to one another
by electricity in the veins
and the light that bends
around our faces
love’s fundamental cosmology
makes us its entangled particles
energised like atoms or galaxies
spinning in the impetuous night
and propels us shining like an isotope
our light reflected in another’s eyes
forward motion
the sun’s last flash at nightfall
the soft whisper of starshine
or earthlight in the shadow
of the moon’s first quarter
how we discover falling together
and slip the leash of gravity
past points of no return not looking back
in impossible flight we spread our wings
© BH, 2018
Another wedding poem (since I mentioned it a week ago). It made on request, as it happens, and read at the wedding ceremony. I understand it was well-received. As before, I hope I avoided the smarm and the sleaze that poems which are fundamentally about love can mire themselves in.
The intention was to find another dynamic and place love in a more philosophical space. Maybe I got there…
Anyway, it’s a gift. Theirs, and now yours. Make of it what you will…
The illustration is a crow and sedges on Dornoch Beach overlaid on cloud over Blantyre and a detail from my father-in-law's painting of Kumasi Market.
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