How to Pour Madness into a Teacup

She hangs her tears at the front of the house
cuts the rain in half and puts time
in the hot black kettle. She sits in the kitchen
reading the teacup full of small dark tears;
 
it’s foretold the man in the wood
hovers in the dark rain above the winding path.
The man is talking to her in moons,
she is laughing to hide her tears
 
and with little time, she secretly
plants the moons in the dark brown bed.
She shivers, thinks the man is watching
as the jokes of the child dance
 
on the roof of the house. Tidying,
she carefully puts hot rain in the teacup,
sings as she hangs her tears on a string
and watching the dance, thinks herself mad.

Abegail Morley

in collection, How to Pour Madness into a Teacup, 2009, Cinnamon Press,
ISBN 978-1-90709-000-4, and nominated for Forward Prize Best Single Poem;
published in Orbis, 142, Winter 2007 & The Spectator, November 2008