Cut
New Year brings with it the flowers –
arranged in a milk bottle;
still with the gift-wrap around their shoulders,
shielding them from the whip-lash of wind
that howls its grief through the skeleton
of a wooden seat just yards from the cliff path.
January is scourged of sentiment.
March: fresh flowers – daffodils now
(I missed the transition) –
but still the bottle; unbroken;
constant as love (for I think it must be love
that re-visits this windswept shrine).
The un-inscribed woodwork offers no clue.
By May, I’m torn (like the gift-wrap)
between an impassioned Puccini scenario –
Pinkerton on the horizon, butterflies
at the edge of the cliff – and the loneliness
of a Joan whose Darby has withered away.
As seasons change, it shifts its persona;
soon, like the seat, it’s a part of the furniture.
I no longer search for a motive; discover instead
peace of mind from its permanence, drawn
to the purity of its deliberate anonymity.
Suddenly – curtain:
flowers, bottle, symmetry – the show is over.
No explanation; no farewell note
(there was never a note).
A breach in my life:
an invisible blot on the landscape.
It’s autumn before I accept the loss.
Another Christmas has come and gone.
So has she: there are freshly cut flowers,
bottled-up sentiments, gift-wrapped sentinels,
blossoms cut short in their prime. Attributable
to an unseen source, identity unknown;
unavailable for comment.
Page(s) 42
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The