Lee Freeman
Last Words
Every day he would write down a freshly discovered word into
The yellow exercise book and memorise its meaning.
Today the word was: Etymology.
The irony wasn’t lost on him.
That book became a source of tremendous pleasure,
Well thumbed through the hard times.
When his eyes became weak with age
He’d flick through its pages and try to remember where he’d been
And what he’d been doing when
Such and such a word was entered.
Better than any dictionary it became his story
Painstakingly compiled as the summers turned into
Winters and as the skin slowly peeled from the bone.
Lee Freeman
The yellow exercise book and memorise its meaning.
Today the word was: Etymology.
The irony wasn’t lost on him.
That book became a source of tremendous pleasure,
Well thumbed through the hard times.
When his eyes became weak with age
He’d flick through its pages and try to remember where he’d been
And what he’d been doing when
Such and such a word was entered.
Better than any dictionary it became his story
Painstakingly compiled as the summers turned into
Winters and as the skin slowly peeled from the bone.
Lee Freeman
Page(s) 52
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