Dressing quietly in the morning twilight my body dissolves
in the ebbing rays of the moon rendering me adrift in time like
some autoscopic throwback to my youth where
she has one job to do before school. There are lambs
to feed, their mouths hot, wet, sucking hungrily at the teats
of their bottles, their breath and spit returning
movement to her bare fingers, smallest hands in the family,
ideal for taking lambs from sheep that can’t birth, shaping plasticine
into colour swirled undiscovered snakes and planets.
She heads for home, clambering up the hill, clinking a bucket
of empty bottles.The cold cuts the back of her throat as
she stops to listen to birds trilling in a berry stripped tree.
She hurries on. If I could offer her any advice now, my dreams
being pinned on hers, I’d wish her to slow down, stop again,
gaze up once more as she used to at Orion descending
into sleep and savour the strains of dawn petering out into day. Back here
in the recesses of mind and room I say I’ve survived those who
dissected my teens but am still bloody from the blades of self- doubt.