Kathryn L. Garrod
The Autograph Book
It surfaced in a trunk. A schoolgirls’ craze with rounded hand -
foolish versed autographs, ink-smudged and page-slipped.
There shining like a beacon through dark of pain,
her father had written.
‘Life is mostly froth and bubble, two things stand like stone.
Kindness in another's trouble, courage in your own.’
Now she understood.
Carelessly, she had accepted his encompassing love,
life-giving and constant as the sun.
A sun that touched gently the top of her head,
warmed her with humour and reasoned argument.
He was her touchstone, understanding of her perplexities,
patient in explanation, awesome in his knowledge.
Unwavering in his faith, he was a man content yet,
he sought the meaning as he walked the lanes of
crouching hawthorn by the derelict mines.
He knew of them too, the sorrow of injustice and she yearned
for this man of intellect whose face would light with the passion of belief.
But her sun had gone, hidden behind a tin washed sky -
the veil drawn,
and in the churchyard she placed golden chrysanthemums,
a sunburst that lit the speckled grey of granite.
Page(s) 30
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