Pooley bridge
A two hundred and fifty year old bridge
gone. Destroyed in a winter’s afternoon,
by the torrent pouring off from the ridge,
the lake rising rapidly in the monsoon,
Premonition
I dread the poem I shall one day write
To read to those who knew you, knew your heart,
The kindness of your soul.
Its rhymes are phantoms in my mind;
Shedding
is not a period
but it’s funny how the homograph is used in this way—to shut things down, as a period (.) is the end of a sentence, the shut down of conversation, a period as it seems to be also does this too whenever a girl has one,
The Moon Just Winked at Me
“We only get to see one side of the moon,” I tell my daughter, pressing her fingers into two tiny fists and circling one around the other. We are sitting cross-legged together in the front garden, sky still dark, where Sheila would normally drive up and take her to school. We watch the moon’s last minutes above the tree line as the dampness of the grass begins to seep through my jeans.
Interruption
A mosaic made up of shards of sunlight lay on the beaten track created by the last rays that glinted through the canopy above. They seemed to make a pattern on the forest floor, stretching across the clearing, as if trying to linger there as long as possible. Nothing disturbed it, not until footsteps could be heard, pounding the hard ground as if attempting to cause their own earthquake. Continue reading
