Hope
Living without tenderness
she plods, begins December
Christmas beckons
from between distant goalposts
She suspects no one knows or cares
about her, leaking kindness
She would be so grateful
hanging fewer and fewer
coloured lights in the rain
for one word or gesture
It’s coming, she mutters to herself
it’s coming
They all live in New York
the poets the real poets
the ones you read in the magazines
the ones who win prizes
and what do I want to say from this space
so very un-New Yorky
where I don’t win or publish, much?
That if I lived in NYC it would be
in a cheap hotel with shared toilets
and a cafeteria in the basement
and as long as the TV worked
with a café at the corner of the block
I’d be content for a while
stepping around the bodies
Interior
There is much to like
about today
the wood and the fire
the cats
the many cups of tea
the cold outside
and the warmth within
which present a metaphor
for my struggles with
people
much splitting and hauling
kindling
to be done
Love song (to my poems)
What I am doing is ridiculous,
trying to leave as many traces on the beach,
the fogged-up mirror,
the garden that will die when I do.
Ridiculous that I walk, draw,
tend you
in a house designed
so no low warming sun in winter gets inside.
Always
Dear, dearer, dearest
Let’s say I’m gone
Let’s say you’re still here
Let’s say you’ve been through my things
as I went through my parents’ possessions
laughing and crying, sorting
Let’s say you’ve children to help you
Let’s say I met them, however briefly
Let’s say they remember a lap or a laugh
a giving of sweetness
Let’s say you find this and read it
Let’s say you fold it, carry it with you,
knowing
always,
yours
