Featherbed [poem]
Climbing yet another hill {although in truth
it was a mountain; but I crossed so many
on my sojourn that a berg becomes a colline
and a hill a little mound, as I have found
on my extensive travels overground
and in the frozen-over earth} to nowhere,
I confess that I was wappend by the road
and ready just to fold up in a crumpled
heap — recline without reprieve or sleep.
I hadn’t journeyed far {although in truth
I flew there from a star so many billion
light years from this plane that just to
think on it would render any astronaut
insane and so I now have come to be
that way inclined!} and when I spotted
through my rustful ancient eyeglass
what I thought were feathers on the
ground, I lay me softly down, to die.
No sooner had I lain {although in truth
my suppless supine body was so wracked
in pain I couldn’t lie me straightly down
and formerly I’d had the thought that
should I ever put me rigid on the earth
I would not ever raise my corpse again}
I heard a voice like thunder carried on
a wingly prayer come from within the
feathers there: “With you I do me share”.
At that, I lay amazed {although in truth
it was a voice I knew so well and lying
where in weariness I fell, I asked a riddle
which the answer to already in my heart
I rightly knew: “Are you that temple in a
palace which I dreamly wander through?”}
— at which another otherworldly voice
I knew said: “Nowhere is as real a bed as
loveness gathered underneath your head”.
© Alan Morrison, 2015
The Naked Troubadour 