It was in the summer,

and words were startled parrots, lost feathers in the grass

I wore Yeats' Terrible Beauty like a black band around my arm

Took my child's hand in mine, walked to the river in the heat

through the insect singing forest, to the waters slow and deep.

Our bodies floated in the tannins, in the blossom litter fall

Our blood cooled in the waters, I could almost hear you call

But the day was not a poem, and the river was not a song,

feathers fell in silence, and the summer kept rolling on.

Miranda Aitken, 2015