What Love Cannot Do

It could not save my friend from seeing what a window
showed him one night, it was Christmas, can't slow
the wave that swallowed Noel, Nelly beneath the wheel,
the bad seed in Ruth's little breast, girls when they fall,

won't castigate the squeeze who plumps for greedy sex
behind your back, our families picked off like tin ducks,
the daft bear galloping from side to side to side;
my rock thuds down again on the sick gull's head,

my rock, six kitties hanging from a rowan branch
and no you will not catch it cancelling a flint, a flinch,
the jailer's giggling stun gun, wire in my belly;
love lugs and struggles upstream, love is only holy,

it does not suckle, wears no fur, will leave no prints;
quit bolstering it, honey, here's my evidence:
when meat rains, when meat rains from the sky,
accept it, love will not be hovering nearby.

Copyright © 2004 Roddy Lumsden All rights reserved
from Mischief Night
Bloodaxe Books/Dufour Editions
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission