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

Mostly I see the elder brides through May and June
their walk between two lives,
the slender one, her hair the colour of fox.
I imagine her sitting at dawn in her attic
dressing her hair this way and that
with ribbons and kirby grips before teasing out
her georgette dress from its shroud of tissue,
shaking out its scent of camphor.
Another one, who confided in the churchyard
of drawing the muslin over her head with
the lingering musk of her grandmother’s perfume
still in the hand-stitched seams.
I remember all those dresses, dimity, organdie,
taffeta, satin, the winter velvet, ivory tones,
buttermilk creams, the pristine froth of white
and occasionally a sad girl who walks in a hurry,
a friend linked either side in their lavenders
or greys, five or six months before a ‘premature’ birth.
She’ll be the one with the worn silver cross and chain,
the tear like a pearl on her cheek,
her beau waiting in his stiff collar. Only the once
in the moonlight, the muffled notes of music
from the church hall, the crushed violets, the thin flute
of the river and her body hot, quickened to the beat
as he unravelled her hair from the thick plait.
They carry a wedding posy, flowers of eyebright and bee-balm,
held in the casual knot of the tied streamer,
never the elderflower, their luscious oval heads,
stamens the colour of sun on white walls.
I steep them, handpicked, love their Muscat scent.
Sometimes I open the sandalwood chest, scatter florets
over my wedding dress, the War Office telegram.