LAND Poem by Ruth Lasters

Can you save ‘together'? Can you by doing much intensely as a couple
protect the other from the one-man cage between underground

floors? Say twice ‘of course' and lay your head
on my buttock, casually since moments like this of wild spleen

return more often than not, down to the pore deposits
exactly the same. Only the gleaning of ‘together' into a dam against

awful singularity may perhaps just once, when backs are languid and
are soft like land full of something further than

hope, full of beauty broken out of the most difficult thing like - you are mine -
tulip bulbs eaten in

wartime.