The inner workings of a sheep's heart

I was looking through some boxes this morning and I found a page of The Weekend Australian that I had scribbled a poem on while I was sitting in a cafe - sometime in March this year - a couple of months into my time here in the Sols.

Reading it again, I'm not sure I'm quite finished with it yet.  It needs some work but one day it might capture the ebb and flow of a tide, a rising sense of urgency about drifting to isolation and the end of a relationship... wanting to fight all of that, and then for a tiny moment, accepting that there are things you can't change...  

This island is floating

in the Pacific.

Beth Orton plays in the café on the island, floating

in the Pacific.

I read a poem about sheep dissection, in the

café on the island, floating

in the Pacific.  And somehow, I think of you.

It speaks of heart-strings that bind

the beating muscle; hold it together-

and I wonder what’s holding our hearts together

for it feels like I’m this island. Floating

in the Pacific; further and further away.

Are you content to watch me go?

To wave from the shore

like everyone before you?

Perhaps wading into the foam-

all the passion and abandon that would require-

would mean getting your feet wet.

Perhaps. But its more calm than I thought here, as Beth Orton plays on

in this café on the island, floating

in the Pacific.