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

A patient woman getting along on very little,
seen by platoons of G.I.s surviving Anzio
as they trudged past the long rows of vines
she had hoed and kicked, picked and pruned,
monotonous rotation of the same season of sun,
public light of work, private dark of dream,
ignorant of the likes and differences of Kansas.

She had been waiting to talk to the other side
of the moon of her generation since the war,
to discuss peace, some truce with expectations
not even a grandchild before forty could sate;
no goal or even direction among worn undies,
no locket enclosing a photograph of her future,
a wife unaware of the necessary state of wait.

When her armistice came she threw herself
into it fearlessly, decisively, even aggressively
to surprise and delight.  She was a giver and she
gave freely, spontaneously to the unlikely meet,
the ferry to Ponza.   He was not a taker but he
took gratefully, gracious as a mendicant monk.
Some disaster forgotten as a child’s first fall

blocked the ferry in port, both hotels full so they
spent her first public dark on the beach, merely
a pebble’s toss from adultery but there were too
many stars to discuss, and of course, the comet.
It was in the full flush of their rebirth that they
planned the aftermath of their funerals. It must
be perfect, on that neither would compromise.

Conversation ceased and a quick return to
stay, wait much the same, but now her undies
hid a souvenir from every dream she had.
Like ashes sprinkled off a bridge at dawn,
though on disparate days in diverse years,
caught up in the same eternal swirl, never
again to land but fly serenely in certainty.