Catherine Edmunds
Willing the Tide to Turn
The sea,
blue as love, is just inches away, but a million
tortoiseshell
butterflies are suddenly ominous, you’ve
released
them from a bright lacquered box, they should
never
have been imprisoned. They clatter to the ground,
pins
through their thoraxes. Their pain erupts in my belly.
A
wounded
walker once shared a box of chocolates
with me;
he had a broken foot, sepsis set in, he said
if he
rested, lay still, he would soon be overcome
by
snails, he found this funny, me too, I knew
it would
be a better ending than what I’ve endured
with
you. Sometimes the rain is soft, sometimes I want
to stop
all the clocks, to build a new life from tiny pieces
of
coloured paper, to fashion twisted juniper trees,
fallen
walls, to consider your reflection—it’s still there—
but I
fear you’ve forgotten all but the small sad songs.
You
exist in the delirious smell of old dust and I don’t know
what you
see. Tick… nothing happens, nothing happens,
nothing
happens… tock. Still nothing.
Come
back to me. We’ll ride the old rockets again,
the ones
with the leather-stropped windows,
the
small round lightbulbs. Come back to me.
Broken
butterflies crunch and snap underfoot.
I smell
burning and your face appears like a spell in the air—
we turn towards the sea, and its waiting silence aches.
_______________
Catherine Edmunds is a writer, artist, and fiddle player with award nominated Irish folk/rock band ‘Share the Darkness’. Her published written works include two poetry collections, four novels and a Holocaust memoir. She has been nominated three times for a Pushcart Prize, shortlisted in the Bridport four times, and has works in journals including Aesthetica, Crannóg and Ambit. Catherine lives in North-East England between the High Pennines and the grey North Sea.
Editor’s Notes: Image is https://www.deviantart.com/robbendebiene/art/Butterfly-Small-Tortoiseshell-526270727 combined with https://www.upi.com/Science_News/2019/08/16/Millions-of-butterflies-swarm-Lake-Tahoe/9621565958795/
