Solidarity with women in Afghanistan

Amazing. Even Steve Harper has spoken out against the changes to laws in Afghanistan.

For my part, a poem, published previously in a publication called Writing for our Lives.

Learning to think about leaving

You are scissors
I am paper
learning to be stone

A surprise when I read in the paper that day
a crime against the law for
a man to rape his wife
all those nights you'd wake me
two a.m. again
bade me open wide
it's your duty don't you know
alarm clock indeed
no clock needed for alarm.

Next day when you went out
to buy yourself some smokes
how I grabbed the scissors,
dug through the recycling
found the story, real;
cut around its black and white
something like a square
leaving just enough white edge
something to hang on to.

When I served the supper, meatballs in sauce
arranged over a bed of rice, salad on the side
how you held the plate, then turned
it upside down, laid it neat and flat upon the table.
I recall your smirk, how it held
the children's big eyes.

A stone grows deep inside me
hot and cold I never know
when it might be I will leave,
but hoping every day, I look
out the window for signs:

bird in the tree
rises through leaves, carrying
a song packed sideways in its throat
a sharpened cry
it circles
and heads out over the sea.