Mixed Blessing

Damian Garside

Strong and stalwart stands the groom
on the very edge of that charmed circle.

Outside, clouds are mustering to kick up a storm,
and official silence is definitively ruptured
by the raucous howdies of an African ibis
launching itself stealthlessly
from the tip of a treetop

Sleek predators, apologists of Nature,
shout from the rooftops:
‘strong in sinew, tough
           in fibre
this is indeed how we were meant to live’

The bride, on the verge of commencing her procession,
thinks that all in good time it will out in the wash
(her dress a sheathe of
embroidered ivory
and her logical, cultural,
acclimatizing mind,
could not be more apposite
when it comes to the quick-fire circuits
in the brain of a cockroach

such as this one,
scampering across the floor in vital pursuit
of something no doubt so
desperately fundamental to its
chemical worldview).

That night,
wolf told her husband mouse
how her sensor-enriched snout
can sniff out
the onset of corruption in
the holiest icon

to which, not to be outdone by his beloved lupine wife,
husband mouse forthrightly responded
extolling the virtues of
a small but skilled, placating tongue
which (and here he was in not the slightest doubt)
could solicit fellow-feeling
from the most hideous demon.

Outside the sky
seems to be longing to
flash-frame the party;
express as a vivid portrait
of all that is
singular, exceptional,
and most unrepeatable

throwing the tableau into such high relief,
short-circuiting all their
cellular technology

leaving them
hugely free of words - in all
so notoriously meddlesome, laboriously clingy.

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