– 139 –

Be Well, Be Humble

She writes: in the dream I am the victim
of a car crash or a domestic dispute,

you decide. I'm lying white in a white
bed in a white ward with little black

stitches like staples hitching ten red
slashes on my arms and my face,

when suddenly the stitches twitch, arch
and flick out. It's anacondas and

tarantulas. Scream.
‘Be well,
be humble,’ says the whiskey priest

in a courtly fax on gilt-edged Papal paper,
‘even as a tumble of runner beans on a compost

heap is humble. Anything other is vice.
How lovely to hear your new voice.’