Happy Place
We would live by a clean sea
and our house would be calm,
not threatened by tides
claiming more and more land
as waters rise. I would swim
with fish and dolphins;
my old body singing
new tunes, still supple.
Grandchildren would visit,
play on uncluttered beaches,
their skins brown with a sun
no longer cancerous
and, as for us, you'd sail
with the son you never had,
your worldly dread
lifted up with the jib
and blown away
and we would write, my love;
still fight, sometimes. Making up
with sex seasoned by years of practice.
You could never be calm
but the anger silting your heart,
the acid in your gut,
would ebb and eddy in a gentle tide.
Jenny lives in Liverpool, worked in Mental Health services and has now retired. An emerging poet, she has been published in online and print magazines and in anthologies. She has poems forthcoming in Prole, Orbis and The Dawntreader. Her debut pamphlet will be published by Yaffle Press in 2021.