When helping friends move (because they are not allowed to stay)

When helping friends move (because they are not allowed to stay)

A poem by EmmaClaire Brightlyn

Love is a many vesselled thing
not limited to a muscle encased by a cage
of bones and a breast.

Love’s mercurial shape can take more states than water,
finding home in plates and dishes as well as kisses and wishes…

In a piano, once sat in a corner,
thumped upon by our children in melody free excitement,
now at home upstairs in a tenement
where a musician will possibly feel the incitement
to thump away with joy in a melody full commitment.

In a dehumidifier now living with a fiddle player
and offering her the major favour
for lungs and strings and notes on paper
some protection in a place where winter and summer
do not discriminate the level of rain shower.

In a standing desk which held up work
for a job merged into redundancy
resulting in illegitimacy according to a visa renewal policy
now being a germination site for poetry.

And connections between
these vessels and the love they hold may seem invisible
as possessions are sold because a government has told
a family of neighbours and playmates and kindred spirits
all rolled up into three bodies
that they must fold up their lives and go.

So

Let’s sew up a magic net to protect as much
of the perfect love, and perhaps we’ll detect
that this is to collect this love for us too.
So it isn’t lost. Not yet.

But spread and shared and given layers and laced with prayers

That all who touch it become aware of how much they matter.

EmmaClaire Brightlyn is the Loud Poets Scottish Slam Champion, to find out more, visit her website.

If you enjoyed EmmaClaire’s poem, we have more poetry on our website which you will find here.