aspiration by MC Thompson

 

 

 

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

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