POEM - Harvesting Couch Grass

Dawn was an apricot moose

this morning 

of the pinched shoulder 

if you read the outward signs

there was nothing wrong

nothing to bare being written

home about

but behind that sensationless 

'nothing to be seen here'

was one taughtly strung muscle

pulling at one's well being like

a child tugging at the seams of clothes 

it wanted attention

a sweet to be sucked on

more likely

a healing hand to smooth

it all away, and

though I am an elder

my Mother long long gone

I'm holding out just in case

she'll turn up 

unexpectedly 

knowing what to do

what salve to use

to make it go away

and if she found she'd reached 

the end of her knowledge 

would walk me down the hill 

to Doctor Lister's

surgery, and deal with it

her prolonged abandoning 

of that Motherly space

means I wallow

in a distinctly male strategem

of misapplied stoicism

as though bearing with it

we're this 

tried and trusted cure all

for every bodily ailment

known to mankind, so

the impingement continues

the need to embody care 

for who I am

instead of fertilising 

my own harvest of couch grass

that no one can reap

pivoting into an

unfiltered masochism

whose feeble integrity lies

in an illusory fit

of will to power 

theosophy.

Written by Stephen Lumb
January 2025