A Fistful of Ashes

A pain-wracked poem on perceived infertility and unacknowledged impotence.

I wrote this poem on a Sunday and read it out to my talented poetry group on the Monday. The main theme of the evening was a superbly executed poetic assault on male sexism by an award-winning guest poet. So I was very fortunate, as the only unattended man in the Zoom room, to have coincidentally written a pain-filled poem about perceived infertility and unacknowledged impotence.

'Watch out for that #truthmouth!', as an author might say whose wonderful interview and book signing I attended on the Tuesday.

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A Fistful of Ashes

Silas is a lonely man, 
silver hairs adorning his palms,
wishing his wife was in his room.
Instead, she taunts his nightmares
with false, floundering half-babies, 
dying in her misled womb.

He pokes a pipe
into his mouth,
to inhale more burnt vanity,
an offering far less sweet 
than women convinced
to coax a show from his fertility.

Cupping a raw face in her hands,
she hides eyes overrun with regret,
from entwining in parental haste.
Her unchaste, blunted torment
in wresting a small, sacred union,
no relief from her ignorant state.

Wind across the chimney pot,
guts his flickering fire,
its penny-whistle a reminder
of his departing bride,
carriage still empty of his prize.
Silas sole witness to forever being a liar.

Loneliness as emptied purgatory,
she stands on the platform,
ready to turn another page.
Departing a loveless prosecution,
she unpeels misplaced guilt
from deceit, desire and rage.

Silas stands to clutch his mantelpiece,
absent of tears as empty heat ebbs
from ashen wood cut by its jailer.
Censoring his unrequited past,
he inters his sour, ageing hopes
in another promising innocent’s failure.

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