Deity

Gillian Swain

More godlike than dog
there’s smile in your walk 
your shadow
and shadow me you do.

How is it that as I slide my hand 
over your head
along your spine,
your silk, your warmth
will move a health into me 
simply through touch?

Seems odd to say out loud.
				
No thoughts disrupt                                                                         
this wordless exchange.

We sit snout to nose
your velvety jowls are
soft kindness.
Over and again you return 
your lolloping love as patient 
as my casualty.
 
Such sweetnesses 
in the nudge of you,
our foreheads still
again.

Wet nose on my cheek.
This is where safe is.
Where hot smelly breath is,
is hair-fall and being scratched 
by too keen claws,
canine caress gone slightly wrong. 

How is it that day and night 
get so busy with worldly 
and you’re always here 
when I get back? 

Gillian Swain is from Lake Macquarie, living in East Maitland NSW. Gillian’s first poetry collection is “My Skin its own Sky” (Flying Islands Press 2019) following the chap-book “Sang Up” (Picaro Press, 2001).

She has poems published in various anthologies and journals, most recently in Live Encounters magazine: Special Australia-New Zealand edition.

Gillian reads poetry at many events, holds poetry workshops for adults and children and is Co-Director of the Indie Writers Festival ‘IF Maitland’.

Gillian’s most favourite things are her four children, her husband and Mum, their two dogs, poetry and coffee… not necessarily in that order.