Peter Lewin
Walking Stick
Up ahead people stream into Church.
She smiles, tells me she can make it.
She's overweight
like in her mid-fifties.
Gravel crunches beneath our feet,
light shines like the reflection
from a burnished cross.
Blue sky, snow clouds.
Daffodils move their heads
over gravestones.
Snowdrops hide in small groups.
Well-kept lawns incinerate my eyes.
Bells peal like they do at weddings.
She's using her walking stick,
the one I use now.
I hold her.
She slumps to the ground.
We've nearly reached the Church.
Everyone else's inside.
Try to open her eyes with thumb and forefinger
only the whites show.
She's shrinking as I lift her,
place her in a cardboard box
to stop the cold biting into her.
The size of a doll now,
cover her with some red-flannel,
just her pasty face showing,
slide her under the wooden seat
inside the Church porch.
I ring the hospital.
Know that number.
It's burnt into memory.
They are on their way they say.
My father standing on the corner, trilby, mackintosh,
smiling unconcerned.
Two skin-heads kick the box to pulp.
The ambulance not here.
magazine list
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- Lamport Court
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- Matter
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- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
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- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
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- Poetry Salzburg Review
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- Private Tutor
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- Quarto
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- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
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- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The