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NICOLA BOWERY



the bed

How still it is, moored on its casters,
how inscrutable
          all the knowledge of its nightly travel
          wedged in its foam and coils,
          printed on the sheets, marine-blue
          or colour of sand
only the bed knows the weft of a couple’s dreaming
          castles, mountains, the puttering plane,
          roads that peter into floodlands
          the revisitations, that room again,
          two lamb chops in a glass of water
only the bed knows the weft of a couple’s sleeping
          the pact one half of the bed makes
          with the body above it
          that perilous waiting for dawn
          the backdrop of the other’s breathing
          this great battery endlessly replenishing,
          the crucial terminal where bodies dock
          and interlock and vanish to oblivion
only the bed knows
          how each body writes on the other
          delicate transcriptions in daylight and darkness
          gasps and giggles of hunger and satiation
          the tender goodnight and the chilly,
          all the waves that roll over the bed
          as if it’s a raft….but it’s bedrock
          the underpinning, inscrutable on its casters
only the bed knows the intricate weft of a couple’s loving.




More poems from Nicola Bowery's poetry collection 'married to this ground'

moments
Invocation, 'as lichen'
Re-greeting Australia the motherland