This handful of doggerel was nagging at me when I woke up today. It will disappear into the ephemera of blogposts and tweets, but demanded to be written down.

I wake with a tumble of problems
rolling round my snot-filled head,
so I turn myself to the other side
and dream of you instead.

I move and see your blood on my bed:
I couldn’t care less about stains;
I’ll wash the sheet but they’ll remain
when you, too brief, are dead.

Outside, while I’m caught in thought
and the throes of this filthy cold,
coriander, kitchen window-framed,
clings to life in a plastic pot.

Quite banal, but based on the morning’s anxieties and Friday evening’s worry, when I came home to hear that my dog had been bleeding uncontrollably from a wound on her chest. She’s fine, but it made me think about her mortality and the huge consolation she gives me. It’s difficult to worry for long when you have a dog beside you.  I really did look out of the kitchen window and see that coriander. Against all reason, this throwaway ingredient has survived for months on top of the sundial in our courtyard. We live, we hang on to life, we die.