tethers of the heart

                                          












                                         The Rope–


                                                by


                                  ...Sinead Morrissey








I have paused in the door jamb’s shadow to watch you
playing Shop or Cliff! or Café or Under-the-sea
among the flotsam of props on our tarmacked driveway.
            All courtship. All courtesy.


At eight and six, you have discovered yourselves friends,
at last, and this the surprise the summer
has gifted me, as if some
             penny-cum-handkerchief conjuror


had let loose a kingfisher . . .
            you whirl and pirouette, as if in a ballet
take decorous turns, and pay for whatever you need
            with a witch’s currency:


grass cuttings, sea glass, coal, an archaeopteryx
of glued kindling from the fire basket.
You don two invisible outsize overcoats – for love?
For luck? And jump with your eyes shut.


And I can almost see it thicken between you –
your sibling-tetheredness, an umbilicus,
fattened on mornings like this as on a mother’s blood,
loose, translucent, not yet in focus


but incipient as yeast and already strong enough
to knock both of you off your balance
when you least expect it, some afternoon after work
            decades hence,


one call from a far-flung city and, look,
all variegated possibles – lovers, kids, apartments –
whiten into mist; the rope is flexing,
tugging you close, and you come, obedient


children that you are, back to this moment,
staggering to a halt and then straightening,
grown little again inside your oversize coats and shoes
and with sea glass still to arrange,
                                    but without me watching


























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