Strange how an insignificant to change to a daily routine can beggar things up a treat.....
For no reason I can rightly recall –
Maybe curiosity,
Or just a change of scenery,
Maybe not sleeping so soundly:
Anyway, one of those times
When even your favourite duck-down
Won’t do its duty
And stubbornly refuses
To contour itself to your cause
Or to cosset your aching neck,
Declines even to hold your head
At anything like the right angle
To draw you nearer to the Land of Nod……
For no good reason like that,
Last night
We swapped our sides of the bed.
I felt as weird as a Nine Bob Note:
A country mile from legal tender,
A full shilling and sixpence short of shrift.
Suddenly I understood
Cups with left-handed handles,
Why McCartney’s Rickenbacker looks wrong,
How my Dad could play cricket the right way round
Yet swing a six-iron only as a sinister.
Even the heat of your body
Came right out of leftfield.
Your breathing sounded strange
In the wrong ear.
My left foot didn’t ‘breathe’ for my body
As efficiently
Stuck out of the duvet
As its mirror brother,
Now marooned
Deep in deep-heat middle ground.
Changing sides:
I’m a sort of dyspraxic, insomniac Mata Hari…
…. At least when dawn came up
I woke up unshot
I don't know how you did it, but you put into perfect words what some might look at as a trivial thing. I am so completely right-handed that sometimes to use my left is like it belongs to some one else. Others things too - like not being able to get to sleep unless lying on my right side. Anyway, just saying that I am impressed with this writing.