Jo Bratten

I am not terribly good at love. Yet 
I begin to think I could be, if love
is loving small things: the moment when 
the second magpie lurches across the path;
or the girl in the purple coat running
towards the dog she doesn’t know; old men
on the bench with sandwiches in the rain;
the back of your neck; breathing you in quick,
thick gulps, like cold water after bedtime;
the smell of dying daffodils that still 
strain to hold their heads bravely towards 
the February sun as it sets over  
Uxbridge, Ruislip, Pinner, Hatch End, Watford – 
all bright and glittering in the smoky air.

In these times we tighten, fasten locks 
like lips, stockpile pills, believe

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our own haptic power to summon 
the fever-gods, draw blood to rub

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across the lintel, into apotropaic 
scratches cut into doors and walls.

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You touch me like a mezuzah, hang me 
by your heart, an omamori, a scapular,

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a locketed caul; hold me on your lips 
a cicada of jade, in your pocket like

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a hare’s foot, a whelk’s shell; I circle 
you like hag stones, word you a breverl:

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the skies are quieter, clean; a blackbird 
pauses, tilts her head, builds a nest.

When the floods clear what will be left, washed up 
at our gate or lodged between the polite

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paving stones along our tree-lined road?
Other people’s newspapers, bags for life,

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little rusted badges with an old slogan,
lost socks and dreams, righteous anger bloated

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like a dead rat, effluent thoughts and prayers
sludged blackly across our doormat’s smiling

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welcome; bits of ourselves we’d cut away
and scattered in the river as fish food

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stuck now on the stern brick of our house,
obscene in their pinkness, puckered

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like little sucking mouths, trying to get 
back in where it is so warm and so dry.