While walking the dogs I thought about love

The embroidery of love.

I walk past these lines of trees every morning, dogs straining, pulling to the space in the hedge where the white feathers strewn signal a struggle between the feline and the young birds winged but yet unable, not strong enough, to take flight.

I stop here every morning, while they scrummage among the debris of death, to contemplate upon the gravity which keeps me planted, and taking out my pad, I draw symbols hoping they will make sense when other eyes trace, extract the emotions I am instilling onto the page. The finger stumped trees, the thick stems of ivy curling around them, fascinate me, and I take off my glasses to see them more obscurely.

“I trace the intricate weave of the ivy parasitic

climb the sleeping bark of gaunt trees arthritic

in the winter cold, branches stark against the ice sky.

It could pass as the embroidery of love,

yet this subtle spine strangles with its embrace,

verdant kisses throttling the heart, its face

green but beneath the gloss, there lies the lie;

this is death, in spite of the colour of its glove.

Love can only be when both rise above

the seasonal feuds and are refreshed, each touch

as if it were an eternal Spring’s flush.”

A group of blind walkers, elderly and lead by a youthful volunteer from The Grange, comes past tapping their way up the narrow road. The dogs are distracted from their excavation, leashes tighten and I am pulled away into the tapestry of the day coming.