Ray Templeton

Another Garden

Stunned on the window, it fell like a stone
after a scrabbled minute of streaked walls
and scattered breakage – scared and scary.
Outside in the early sun, in their hands
they felt the pulse in its warm body, so weak
only its eyes moved, flicking like cloudy black beads.

Set on the grass, as they watched indoors,
it flapped as far as the hedge and out of sight,
to find release, or to die, in another garden.
Still, their fingers moved with the fluttering beat,
and something more – knew its ardent urge
for the air, grasped the certain duty to escape.

The Visit

He has no peace these days, plagued by dread,
as a dark moth flickers at a window.
For years, he’d kept a picture in a box:
creased souvenir, like looking in a mirror.

He grew up unnerved by shadows, by portents –
electric storms, a flight of geese.
When this is done, she’d say, the breach will close,
what’s missed lay at our feet.

One day – birds outlined against the sky,
slow, almost suspended, like a Sunday kite –
he came home to a pale face streaked with tears,
an old Ford at the turn of the lane.