Devil's Dyke.

Excerpts from The Familiarity

This poem ‘Devil’s Dyke’ will feature in my forthcoming publication ‘The Familiarity’. It sits in the narrative arc where love has parted, and where the transactional existence of marriage had not only emerged but worn thin. But as always, there is hope.

The Familiarity
The Familiarity is a poetic meditation on the evolving landscape of long-term love—its quiet devastations, its unnoticed beauty, and the way intimacy can both sustain and suffocate. It explores how marriages can move from the thrilling beginning to the transactional middle, where perhaps we forget who we both were, and have become.

The poems pose the questions, is there anything greater than falling in love with the same person twice? But to get there, how much do you have to fall out of love?

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Devil’s Dyke.

Sitting on the crest of a hill,
I looked down across the valleys,
the undulating landscape below.
Small villages dotted in their isolation,
steeples from churches stretching toward an invisible God.
The night sky descended,
and all the little stars trailed off into the distance.

I looked out upon all these villages,
all these little lives that we lead—
all these seemingly insignificant lives,
weighted with insurmountable happiness
and grief.
Incidental moments in kitchens,
by Aga cookers,
over breakfast,
small arguments,
and discontented goodbyes.
A cracked smile,
a lip quivering with venom.
Alone, together.

Off we commute to grey cities,
where we work like mechanical animals,
returning with the hope of resolution,
that there is peace,
that we will find peace,
and the person we love
will always remain the person we love.
Together, alone.

We have drifted apart in The Familiarity.

All these little lives we lead,
all these insignificant lives that have been led,
now dust upon dust,
ground upon the ground.
Etched cement marks where we lie,
and who we once were.
The steeple in the background tilts,
the churches have been emptied.
A crow arcs maudlin in the southern sky.
The sunset drips bittersweet grenadine trails.

We are more divided than ever before.
All these insignificant lives we lead,
in these kitchens,
in these basements,
in these teenage bedrooms with hopes dismantled day by day.
The world is moving at a quickening pace.
The animals are screeching.
They're in pain.
The rains fall down heavily.
Landslides collapse cities.
The world spins off its axis.
Atlas shrugs and drops the ball.

All these insignificant lives we have led,
the moss carpet of green covers us until we decay
and finally,
we return to the earth,
we return to where we belong.

Together, alone.
Alone, together.

I love all of you that you once were
and all of you that you have yet to become.

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