A Poem by J.S. Watts

Melting Into Air

It is the moon again.

How fitting.
Seemingly she howls for a misplaced lover,
but it is other
she is really seeking.
So many pages in
and she has lost the plot;
doesn't she just know it.
That's the real reason for the rush, this flush
of agitations and lamentations
at her own unquiet self.

It is never an instant demise.

Two subtracted into one sometime back,
but now there is further reduction.
She knows the signs off by heart:
a slackening of perfection,
former dainties hang loose and slowly melt,
dimming beauties are shadowed
by the scuttling echoes
of the still to come.
So nearly sleek and whole for just a little while longer,
the heat of ages grows ever higher.

Some one day she will have to accept,

but in the raging of the current moment
there is only fear and loss.
The wailing for the other,
the once significant lover,
is only a side-show to the main event,
the hunt for her disappearing self.
Fight and flight, up close and personal
to the haggard face of the inevitable;
the whisper of defiance
against a night-time of dissolving dreams.



J.S.Watts lives and writes in the flatlands of East Anglia in the U.K. Her poetry, short fiction and reviews appear in a range of publications in Britain, Canada, Australia and the States including: Acumen, Envoi, Mslexia and Orbis and have been broadcast on BBC and Independent Radio. Her first poetry collection, “Cats and Other Myths” and a subsequent chapbook, "Songs of Steelyard Sue" are published by Lapwing Publications. Her novel, "A Darker Moon" is published in the US and the UK by Vagabondage Press . Further details at: www.jswatts.co.uk