A woman's world
She looked for herself in the past
because the past didn’t exist
or at least not as a heavy
overcoat or that dark figure
in the doorway. Warm as gravy
her voice and sticky as sugar
the images from her nowhere.
So others were always unsure
of her geography although
they learned the language that she spoke,
felt from her cold reaches a thaw
sometimes but never turned to make
the journey. And they would leave her
singing or just combing her hair,
or sensing that they had become
a wrongly dated reference
book and that the path to her home
had become blurred in the distance.
And then, in her non-existence,
the air grew lively as a dance;
in a past that had not happened,
she one day felt what she could touch
and met with love for which she’d pined
and heard dark armies on the march.
But they knew none of this, that day
they found her. By an open door,
milk bottles stood as they were left,
and letters from a land they had
never heard of creaked like a drift
of snow reaching, a small cupboard.
because the past didn’t exist
or at least not as a heavy
overcoat or that dark figure
in the doorway. Warm as gravy
her voice and sticky as sugar
the images from her nowhere.
So others were always unsure
of her geography although
they learned the language that she spoke,
felt from her cold reaches a thaw
sometimes but never turned to make
the journey. And they would leave her
singing or just combing her hair,
or sensing that they had become
a wrongly dated reference
book and that the path to her home
had become blurred in the distance.
And then, in her non-existence,
the air grew lively as a dance;
in a past that had not happened,
she one day felt what she could touch
and met with love for which she’d pined
and heard dark armies on the march.
But they knew none of this, that day
they found her. By an open door,
milk bottles stood as they were left,
and letters from a land they had
never heard of creaked like a drift
of snow reaching, a small cupboard.
Ian Caws has published ten collections of poetry. Taro Fair (Shoestring Press) appears this summer
Page(s) 62
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