Emerging into the half light

of a sweet winter sun,

I feel your longing

for the old life,

the one we once knew

when the earth was younger,

where we ploughed our first story

deep in her folds and furrows.

Our child remembers,

born in the dark of a cold night,

his scream the scream

of all our sorrow.

He turned seven when you left,

taken by the duty

that weighs heavy on a chieftain

with more mouths to feed

than just our own.

I cried those long nights,

turning sideways to fill the space

where you had lain in our bed.

I wept until I took your axe,

the old one propped in the woodshed,

a rusting testimony

to the love that built our home, our hearth.

Sharpening its blade with the whetstone,

then unfurling my hair from its pleated coil

wound tightly around my head,

carefully fanning the tresses

across the smooth rim

of the kitchen table you'd crafted

for me to chop and stir my herbs.

With one clean slice, the follicles

fell away to the dirt floor.

No more would you cover

your face with my locks

or bury yourself, laughing,

in the nape of my neck.

Burnt hair on the fire

smells of death.

I am stronger now,

the reverse of Samson,

a Delilah shorn, my hair gone,

yet I have more than the strength you left

in the cleave of your axe.

I heave that metal claw to our bed,

to hack and split the emptiness

into fuel for a new fire.

I am warm once more,

though I keep a lock

of our lost love

close against my chest

to remember the old life

when the earth was young

and we were fresh with spring.

SCM January 2020