Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

Poetry Library Southbank Centre - The Poetry Library housing the Arts Council Collection at Southbank Centre

« Previous item
Contents of this issue
Next item »

Linda Rose Parkes

print this page

But Today You Love Me In My Silk Pyjamas

This is the morning the rain stops out on the strand,
thoughts rolling like a wave combed by the salt wind,
we fish with our hands, dance on water.
Tomorrow a ship could dock an army,
a vessel in the brain explode through the open door

where we fall out of good time. But today
you love me in my silk pyjamas, your capacious heart
soothed by the long climb of buttons that start
at the dip of cleavage into two tipped wings where everything
happens with timely need; no sulky outburst, no indulgent grief.

And if you asked me to describe the soul,
I’d say it’s a shack with an old rain barrel
where leaves collect; five goats grazing on the hill
and a neighbour playing Placido Domingo with Barbara Streisand
crescendoing away bad nerves and loneliness,

in the sweetest moment of love reassembled
and raised up for the trailer of an immortal film.
I’m alone at the window,
held by the shadows stretching
this way and that.

An unerring feel for the slow now
grows in the light between chair and table,
between cups; married bliss quietly at home,
finding a moment to take stock
when the neighbour winds the tape back three times.

 


Linda Rose Parkes was born in Jersey and studied literature at U.E.A. before teaching in Germany for 20 years, where she worked and performed with song writers and musicians. She has now returned to Jersey where she writes and teaches. She is widely published in magazines and anthologies and was the winner of The Blue Nose, 2001.

 

Page(s) 73

Back to top