Continue reading “past, present, future”
Category: dates & time
remember, remember
Bonfire night:
the wide-eyed moon looks down
on multi-coloured stars
of things past
All Hallows Anniversary
A heavy storm has made the flat roof leak
and in the small hours, memories drip
from the bedroom ceiling.Unlike the rain they cannot be absorbed
by piles of folded towels, or mopped into a bucket, so
I paddle through them, barefoot, towards dawn.Flower stalls sprout on street corners and blossom
with chrysanthemums and wreaths
for loved ones’ graves.I skirt the queues and wonder, should I buy
for the ghost of a relationship
long dead?
The poem is from the collection Around the Corner from Hope Street.
Read sequentially, the poems reveal a narrative thread, covering a period of 15 months in the life of the female narrator; they deal with themes of alienation and isolation, recovery and renewal, and, of course, love. The book is illustrated in black and white by graphic artist Lance Tooks and available in various digital formats from the Tantamount bookstore.
(A draft of the poem was posted on the blog a few years ago.)
hallowmas
I’ve always liked graveyards. Not the sort of highrise blocks of niches with plastic flowers and laminated photos that you find in Spain, but proper British graveyards with grass and moss; where the slate and granite is so worn and weathered that you have to touch the stones to trace the names. 
nostalgia
I took this picture a couple of weeks ago and was looking for an excuse to post it to the blog. 
L.P. Hartley was wrong: the past is not a foreign country; it is where I was born and I’m feeling quite homesick.
don't confuse the narrator 