Two Poems

I wrote these two poems last year, during lock-down. I think they are two of my best  - or is that just because they are the most recent?

 

Since then I have been writing The Ancestor Series - but soon perhaps will return to this very different form.

 

 

 

MORNING WALK

8th August 2021

 

 

 The breeze blows fallen leaves into a circle dance.

It is August: cardigans and raincoats,

trudging round castles in Wales,

longing for the beach.

 

 An empty Perla can rolls towards me

silver green silver green silver.

My hair still damp from the shower

whips across my face.

 

"It's all the same" you said,

putting down the Fairy Liquid bottle,

squeezing the rinsing water through a sponge

as I leaned over the kitchen sink;

"It's all the same"

adding Stergene to the bath against the scum.

 

A hundred years ago there was no you,

not yet born, two months to go.

Was it the same?

No.

 

Behind me, in the distance,

the wind-blown can

rattles away.

*************

BUS RIDE
12/13th August 2021

 

You got off before me.

It had been a bumpy road
through a town, a village, mountains, and a garden.
The sun had shone;
the rain had smeared the view - a glimpse of the sea.
There had been stops and starts,
 people had got off and on, and then
you were gone.

Beside me all your things, just left. 

How could you have so many things? and on a bus?
And somewhere - where? -  was the dog.

I dashed to the top, your pack heavy on my back,
and under the seats he was snaffling treats among the litter.
Scooping him up, I rattled down the stairs and off -
but you weren’t there
just a hungry dog and piles of things.

Waking, in my sliver of the bed,
I watch your chest rise and fall.
Not got off yet then.

The dog, curled at my feet,
snores.