Guest Poem by Gill Learner

Gill Learner has won a number prizes, including the Poetry Society’s Hamish Canham award, and been published in a wide range of magazines and anthologies. She subscribes to too many magazines, including Acumen, and loves reading her poems to an audience: she is a regular at Reading’s Poets’ Café. Her collections, The Agister’s Experiment (2011), Chill Factor (2016) and Change (2021) are all from Two Rivers Press; all. have been pleasingly reviewed.

Let it Be Like This

The smell will arrive first – ylang ylang, perhaps,
or sandalwood. It will be followed by a cloud
of a colour never seen before: this will surround me,
block the light. Faintly at first I’ll hear music – violins
and cellos at the start, then, as the volume grows,
the rumble of a double bass. Soon woodwind
will join in and maybe, just audible above the rest,
a theramin will add its eerie voice.
I will stand
for several minutes, breathing in the scents, then
lie down on a surface, warm and spongy soft,
which will cradle my tired bones. I will stretch out
in Savasana as the music swells and fades.
Slowly my flesh will soften, dissolve and rise
to become one with the cloud.