Month: June 2025

Our first bedroom
was a work of art
where I bought my
profession and my painting to bear
like a Bower Bird building a nest to
attract and cement
a relationship with a mate.
I always preferred to make
my own Valentine cards
Christmas and birthday offerings
and even the gifts if possible
and that room was my gift to you
– on the ceiling a giant Chinese
prawn painted paper parasol
which I surprised you with
on a date in London and as
we walked, giddy along Oxford Street
we gathered a crowd of people
seeking shelter from the torrential rain
the painted prawns in their element
stopped from swimming off only by varnish.

The wall at the head of the bed
swam with myriad shoals of
tiny fishes gleaming like Neon Tetras
where I over sprayed the stencil
with spatters of silver
and the other wall moved subtly
from undersea azure to
misty morning blue
where an undergrowth of
real plants pressed and stencilled
emerged from the mist
at the foot of the wall
a perpetual daybreak to
greet us each morning.

I will not say that
all our intimacies took
place in that love nest
for in those days, any room
would do for us before
the clouds settled down on us
dampening ardour except for
brilliant sunbeams occasionally
breaking through
that bedroom was always but
our happy place
beneath the prawns
amongst the fishes
and flowering weeds
of late summer.

© Andrew Wilson, 2025

Over at dVerse Poets Pub,  Dora in Poetics invetes us to “write a poem that conjures a view (whether from our travels or everyday life, whether from desire or experience) that is colored by the emotion of the moment“