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Jim Murdoch

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My Wife’s Back

The law of conservation of energy states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed – only converted from one form of energy to another.


I was lying in bed this morning with my back
pressed against my wife’s back (she has a very warm back)

and I started writing a poem (not this poem)
about my wife’s back and how much
I was enjoying lying against it

I should’ve got up and started writing the poem immediately
(I’ve been at this game a long time; I know the drill)
but my wife’s back was so warm and I was so cozy
I decided to lie on a while.

When I got up I wrote this poem
and as I did I felt my wife’s warmth leave my back.
I wonder how much wound up here.


Jim Murdoch has been writing poetry for fifty years and has graced the pages of many now-defunct magazines and a few, like Ink, Sweat and Tears, The Lake and Eclectica, that are still hanging on in there. For ten years he ran the literary blog The Truth About Lies but now lives quietly in Scotland with his wife and (increasingly) next door’s cat. He has published two books of poetry, a short story collection and four novels.
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