C C Canning
Words I failed to speak
When you, golden,
Turned shining eyes towards the gatekeeper's scowl
That habitually guards my face
And held out your hand, asking to be led, and I
Fearing failure slipped on the ring and looked away,
The key to my secret room safely in my pocket
Then, unprotected by prior maternity,
Or the guardian solace of accompanying sisterhood,
When you felt your life being forced aside
By a growth erupting within you clamouring for primacy
I, unable to imagine flesh succouring flesh,
Feeding it with a life intended to replace your own,
Jealously retreated
Not realising that in the first hour of sleep
Your demons come to haunt you, sneering at the ease
With which unconscious neglect has left you unaided
In the treatment of hidden scars that suppurate still
In the moments when your life's fire goes un-fanned
And you reach in vain for warmth
So, coming as we did, to places we had found separately
Alone
We failed to speak of the fear of being alone
And of our anger that such fear was not being driven back
By words which could so easily be spoken,
Walls of words more comforting than
The palisades of self-inflicted pain that separate
Those who fail to speak
Then, did you not know that I had a secret plan?
To keep you alive: to hold onto you on the dark nights
When life seeks to slip away and
The God-questions go unanswered?
A secret plan that I and you had both forgotten because I failed to speak,
And how were you to know when words were left unspoken?
It’s silence that kills us
After I’m gone there will be nothing you can say
Speak to me now and speak to me every day
We don’t exist in words alone
But we don’t exist without them
If we speak now you won’t resent me when I’m gone
But if we don’t speak now you’ll resent me
For not being there before I was gone
It’s silence that kills us
Not words that are the curse
One Day
before you were born
out of the sunlight between the cracks
that separated clouds skidding
uncontrollably across the tense tight landscape
of misdirected blame
one man and
one woman reached an agreement
to bring you to life,
never having met you
You were imagined that day
as the ewe imagines its lamb
and runs back along the snow blind fence line
bleating in pain
to offer its frozen teat
You were imagined so well
that as you entered the world
the familiarity of your face
attitude and smell
closed out the possibility of ever
knowing anyone else so well again
Look now at what one day can do
That day was you
By the light of a tea candle
When the world is dark
And darkness hides despair
Light is like a lancet
That punctures the heart and voids the soul
So hope becomes a mockery
How extraordinary then that you
Would light a tea candle
And lay your gypsy head
On my broken body
And stem my bleeding heart
With the soothing sound of breathing
Till sadness turned to wonderment
At your beauty
At my love
At you
By the light of a tea candle