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 »

Liz Atkin

print this page

Picnic

There are sixteen of us waiting
in Neurology Outpatients
when she comes in
steered by her husband.

She is tall and thin with clumps
of grey hair like sprung stuffing,
and wears a floral dress,
zipped-up anorak and slow-shuffle shoes.

He halts her in front of the last
empty chair and lays on it
a plastic-backed fleecy blanket
for her to sit down upon.

His action reminds me first
of the old-fashioned courtesy
of being shoehorned into your chair
with a touch of matador flourish,

but then his final patting
makes me think of picnic rugs
laid on grassy banks,
the checking for thistles beneath,

and sure enough her face is elsewhere,
maybe hearing birdsong in a meadow
alongside weir and willows

and he stands behind her,
fencepost straight, one hand
gently resting on her shoulder

his eyes defiantly meeting
the flutter and flit of ours
as a ripe smell of dung rises.

 

Page(s) 15

Back to top