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Danielle Hope poems
Life assurance
payable on death
providing it is swift and from
a new unexpected illness.
Mortgage protection plan
payable for one of twenty ailments
providing that it is incurable,
uncomplicated, unrelated to profession,
psychology, diet, drink or lifestyle,
or injury, infection, infarct or inflammation,
is not inherent, dormant, or inborn
being absent in your siblings, parents,
grandparents, aunts, cousins, children,
and is claimed before sixty.
Nursing home protection cover
payable for a place in
one of our deluxe nursing homes –
providing that there are
no relatives to care for you,
no local authority homes,
you are incapacitated and incompetent,
(but not incontinent)
your entry is involuntary
and does not occur before eighty-five.
Premium waiver indemnity
payable if your premiums are late
except in cases of insolvency.
A benefit may be deducted
from a previous benefit.
Persons excluded: fire-eaters,
ski-instructors, explorers,
builders, window-cleaners,
divers, astronauts,
publicans, poisoners,
pilots,
painters,
poets.
Anatomically the heart
lies left below the breast bone
beats from dark to light
and light to dark again.
Soft through the nights
like rain on a tent canopy
that flaps stubbornly
with the turning weathervane.
But there are times
when the heart marches
like a opera chorus
rousing overtures and arias
to deluge the whole platform.
Mathematically the heart
has two chambers
one blue and one red
but it sends out longing
that is not like that.
More like a river
that traverses valleys
and sometimes rapids
sometimes the backs
of city streets, coal stacks,
sometimes nurturing cormorant
and kingfisher, songbirds
knotted reeds and secret trout.
My neighbour Joan
cultivates a baroque garden
from a bed of stones.
On her new emerald lawn
she erects fountains
white railings
and a cardboard tree.
This Saturday she will tour
her visitors
confound them with Latin names
and sparrows you only hear.
Over the fence
my garden is still stones.
Orange and brown
they smell of rain.
And whether I hold
a gilt-edged trowel
or strike them with my spade
the stones stare back
and whisper no.
Priests offered it in weekly benediction to bless
after chants and motets, in Eucharist
or Mass, to magnify a union or to heal
the sick. Doves were sometimes released.
Lovers do it too. The caress – careless or casual.
The home from work, the comfort me, or the moment
when hands become all scent and skin, the arch of wrist,
the smooth palm and pure white fingernail tip.
So doctors learned it, palpated sick limbs, gauged temperatures,
pulses, probed chests, abdomens and necks, to fathom symptoms,
interrogate signs. But now machines seek better, deeper,
further, filling the walls with images, bright and cold.