Rehearsal
John Stocks
Sometimes you lie, wrapped tight,
so snug that it looks like a rehearsal,
for a time when I am no longer there
the span of years when women live alone.
Curled like a dormouse in winter torpor
lying on a bed of apple scented moss.
Lost somewhere. In a kindness of winter sleep
of sighs and murmurs, scarcely breathing.
As, unheeded, time slips through our fingers
transience, like an unseen mountain stream.
As ever flowing months fold into dreams
and then slip effortlessly into years.
John Stocks is a UK-based poet, novelist, historian, and free-lance journalist who has had work published in magazines worldwide and has been widely anthologized. John appeared in the Soul Feathers anthology, alongside Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, and others. He also had the honor of sharing a page with Maya Angelou in the anthology, Heart Shoots.