Rosa Pendulina and me, John

Sat inside now
Listening to a neighbour’s
Mower thrash through the straw
I wonder why?
This is not a summer for grass,
Green belongs to a bygone age

Came in when my flesh
Resembled melted lard
And when the supply
Of dark chocolate slabs
Had run low, the chapter
Abandoned, unfinished

And after I’d felt guilty for
Finger flicking an
Appealing shield bug
From my knee
And after the coffee-swimming
Wasp had stopped its writhing

Despite the mini summer drama
Of the previous fifteen minutes
I could not walk past Rosa
Her red cheeks and green dress
Catapulted me from the Iowa
Of the book to the here and now

The shield bug may not
Even have landed
When time escaped its boundary
And the needs of the day
Were found relegated.
Pendulina had swung me

From the temporal to the eternal
From the imaginary to the image
From my paltry love
To the all-consuming fire
The burning that is judgement
And mercy upon mercy

That found its mark
In a life laid down:
The ‘Nevertheless’ man
The ‘Woman, behold your son’ man
The ‘Son, behold your mother’ man
A man named John