spiritual

You say, when I use the word,
that she, my she, uses it too -
you say ‘what does it mean?’

And this, when leaning against the backdoor post,
you roll a roll-up and other thoughts
wander round my head,
playing with the distance in our age,
feeling your youth, your relative youth,
wanting to sustain your journey,
thinking of our near-strangers’ intimacy,
and I telling you of too many things that are
never opened,
like a child with a tale or two to tell
but, then, I strain for inspiration,
the freezing air scratching at my nape and wrists.

We return to the warmth and our others
and to calm the unease I say
‘We discussed the spiritual’.
‘And what is that?’
Your he says it’s the movement away from hard memories,
a separation.

My she says it’s the link when mind and body become one.
Splitting off and melding –
it is, it seems, two opposites in one.

But, as you rise from the sofa and leave the room,
I think it may be the SMALL velleities,
the hesitancies that danced around us,
like ghosts of summer butterflies,
in
the winter air.