Sleigh Ride
Let’s take the road before us and sing a chorus or two
Come on, it’s lovely weather for a sleigh ride together with you.
You want to play it exactly as written
but the three bars an octave up are decoration.
Every year I have to remind you:
the accompaniment’s not equal to the singer.
And this is the push and pull of marriage
like that January we lumbered through
a wintry landscape in a borrowed car,
me with a blanket over my knees.
Christmas music replayed itself
and soft flakes were falling on fields,
melting on the windscreen. I wanted
a house on the Bold Road, to do up
for our first home. The bright song
takes me every time to that moment
when the first compromise was made
and I first learned to let things go.
Angela Topping
From Hearth (Mother’s Milk Books 2015)
Angela Topping 
And to you Angela