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Roz Goddard

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Exchange

Like something gone, a thumb size
doll smothered in sand or a two
summers ago favourite dress shoved
away with the table clothes. I had a
notion that something important was lost

It was the silences that gave me clues,
the way they built and filled a room. The
way one laid on top of another and
became the impossible to shift shell
of an old motor

Then there was her face, grey as
a newspaper left out in a storm and
the soft shuffle of slippers, taking the
nap from the carpet, and those endless
heavy-smelling roast dinners

He kept his distance but turned up
for meals then went to sleep,
much like the cat. The garden was his place
he planted onion sets and early seed potatoes
before anyone else.

Somehow, in the quiet of the cold back
bedroom, with the sad pillows and
kidney shaped dresser, she got pregnant
again and bluebells appeared in a jar
on the kitchen shelf.

He bought a chicken coop and started
talking to the birds. And inside, words
became the difficult to understand coinage
of a foreign currency, spent in tiny amounts
to be sure it lasted the whole holiday.

 

Roz Goddard is a member of the Poetry Society's Poetryclass team.  Her first collection, The Magic Garter, was published by Flarestack in 1999. A second, From Dagger, is forthcoming in 2002.

Page(s) 52

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