aspiration
by MC Thompson
MC Thompson is originally from South London, but now lives in Gosport on the south coast of Hampshire. She is an Anglican Priest, and shares her Vicarage with a menagerie of rescue animals. When not trying to run the Parish, she is usually to be found tramping through fields, talking to horses or falling off her bicycle. This is her first published poem.
aspiration
breathe in
in the half-light, a bird (breed unknown :
someone would know : that someone
used to be you : but it’s dim
and your eyes are older now : and the bird
is far from the edge of the lake : and besides
it’s irrelevant for the meaning)
dives :-
and you find yourself holding your breath as if
by some telekinetic osmosis you
could send your air into avian lungs
like a dad blowing up armbands :
wait :-
there’s nothing : just the almost-
motion of wind on the lapping :
resolve you can stay no longer, turn,
tell yourself it will be ok (that’s what
those kind of birds do : maybe you
simply missed its re-emergence : maybe
not but it’s not going to drown) :
walk on :-
until after two hundred steps you spot
in the centre-lake its bobbing :
having travelled farther in secret than you
can tread on the clodding earth :
then :-
only then you let out your
breath
MC Thompson