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