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

Carole visits tomorrow
I will lock the back door, spruce the apple
up the glasses with polish, spit at next door's cat so it does not
interfere.
It is all in the preparation, mother -
who was a stick for preparation, always checking,
sprucing, cleaning, ironing the curtains - said so, people
say so so I know so and Carole - who is a special Carole,
one with an E you see - will sit nicely and catch
the gleam of the clean and golden
sheening
off the little pots I have arranged; just so, just so so to say so that my
arranging
is neat.

But the man from Wiggin's won't come I hope not so,
just my Carole with an E, not with a Wiggin man.

Father - who is gone dead in a box - looks on from the mantle-piece
a corporal on a tank with mates in a grey frame - would like C -

I some times call her C you see with an E, he would like that he would
always liked C's with an E.

I will make sandwiches - cress and egg

We used to watch trains,
at Loughborough when she was a green nurse
after shifts in the sheet-hot sun in July before it rains always now
I collected numbers with a biro, caught
the thrill of the pair of Twenties

watched her, walk down the road to me,

she was dreaming of Adrian

I think it was the E that made her marry him

I did not see what she'd see in
and he was no spotter like us,
made her burn her books with numbers
sold up her river as if it were tat,
binned her traits.

It is years later now, my Carole with an E is coming
to visit, me in my little house with dusted pots and I still
have the spotter books, will tease her she could
have been me as if
anyone would be
me.