Tuesday Poem: If You are Lucky by Michelle McGrane

If you are lucky
you will carry one night with you
for the rest of your life,
a night like no other.
You won't see it coming.

Forget the day, the year.
It will arrive uninvoked,
an astrological anomaly.

You will remember
how every cell in your body
knew him, this stranger,

how you held your breath,
the way you searched his face.
This is how such evenings begin.

And you will be real in your skin,
bone and sinew;  the way you always thought
you could be.  Effortlessly.
This is how you will fit together.

His parted lips between your thighs,
your half-lit nipples darkening,
the hot-breathed arrival of desire,
the frenzied coupling
as you opened soundlessly
and the world flooded into you.

In the morning, maybe,
soon after sunrise
you will walk barefoot above a waterfall in the forest,
light-headed with the smell of sex,
laughing in your déshabillée.

You will carry
the music of this memory with you;
and from time to time,
in the small, withered hours,
your body will sing its remembering.

© Michelle McGrane

From A Suitable Girl, published by Pindrop Press 2010
Published with permission


This wonderful, sensual, romantic poem comes from Michelle McGrane's most recent collection A Suitable Girl.  The whole collection is very impressive and you can find a much longer review of it, with more poetry, over on my book blog hereMichelle McGrane was born in Zimbabwe in 1974, moved to South Africa when she was 14 and now lives in Johannesburg.  She edits the fantastic poetry site 'Peony Moon', (if you haven't checked it out before then please do) though where she gets the time to write, work and edit is a mystery!   Michelle has recently been to the UK for a series of poetry readings and is one of the international poets included in the forthcoming anthology of art and poetry 'Estuary', published in the USA by Moon and Mountain and edited by Harriette Lawler and Agnes Marton.

If you'd like to see more poetry, pop over to the Tuesday Poem hub and check out what the Tuesday Poets are posting from around the world.

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