Love is like an allotment
Neglected
brambles uncoil
like barbed wire
chokes the grass
buds turn to clots
scratches criss-cross
our thin wrists
fingerprints grouted
teeth stained
with each other’s blood
tended
it can feed your family
a place to sip tea
watching the sun
slip from the sky
while woodsmoke
wraps our wrists
with a ribbon
weaves itself
into our clothes
both
in a shadowed corner
a cornflower blazes blue
a pilot light
Shoals Of Starlings 