The snowballs on the snowberry shrub 
are much too small as snowballs go. I stare 
out the kitchen window, roll this 
simple tongue-twister over and over.

Is there loneliness in nature – behind the cry 
of a seagull, say? Does the flower 
let loose, under assault of the slug’s rasp, 
a high-pitched scream lost on us?

We yelled at each other: I’m sick and tired 
of dragging the dead log that is our life – 
you may as well be tied to a tree 
as to me, we’re going nowhere together.

I hear you moving in the bedroom above 
my head, curtains opening with 
a drawn-out whisper. The radio detonates 
a pop song beside the bed. You

have your reasons and they are good. 
Mine are reamed in rhyme, crooked, hid. 
We mope until you come down 
or I go up, both of us recognising how love

makes for one bundle, joy and sorrow, 
as we turn from our off-colour, 
out-of-kilter meditation on the snowballs 
clinging to the snowberry in its hover.