On Our Bed Poem by Christopher Woodall

There was a shed I never saw
In a corner, spider-ridden,
When I came in the night to seduce you.

You tore it down before the light
Exposing the ground beneath it
Which waited tense under a lace of thorns.

My spade leapt in the air and drove
Into the dark earth many times;
My hands embraced the thorns and took their wounds.

We watered the earth with our sweat
And cut it with fresh memories
That suffused and tenderised the cold soil

So that it rose like fresh-baked bread;
Soft and square as the sprung-mattress
On which we lie together these new nights

Now that our carefully sown seeds
Have safely gestated and broken through
In the sunlight of our first Spring.