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i.m. Julia Casterton
A butterfly flits into our meadow of wild flowers, swishes her scarf over her shoulder and asks me to introduce myself and are you married?
I explain my wife has died. Oh, she says, We’ve got a widower. After I’ve read my poem, she turns like a sonnet,
alights on a familiar phrase, and says If you can say that in a different way Peter, please let me know, it may be rather difficult but well worth trying. Then she’s gone,
fluttering off, hovers over a cowslip, Hello Helen, what have you been writing?
If I believed in ghosts this is where I would find them, crouched close to pale waterways,
in reeds darkened by mud and water, a glow of golden straw where they reach for warmth in the salty air.
Only the marsh harriers would glimpse them as they screeched overhead in a tumble of earthward plunges.
Quicksilver sea grumbles into the staithe, nudges the hull of a row-boat, its paint old and peeled.
Clouds smudge the sky. I hear the rustle of reeds, a whispered conversation between lovers, tremulous, coming in on the wind.
Peter Phillips in collection Wide Skies, Salt and Best Bitter, 2005, Hearing Eye, ISBN 1-905082-03-7
The clock in my head strikes back to your death.
Our daughter is having a baby. I wonder if you know.
To My Daughter
You say you can’t stop laughing when you learn you’re having twins.
I hope you’re still laughing in six months’ time.
To My Grandchildren
I can see you in that cramped space feeling the certainty
of your mother’s heart, looking out for each other.
I answer box in Postcard Monthly, ten years go. I write, say I send religion cards, cards of synagogues. He writes me quick, say he pays price cards he like.
I asking he send dollars to Olga in Helsinki — no letter to St Petersburg. We no speak. I register cards. He register dollars.
Ten, twelve letters year I sending. He pay Olga for stamps also. Olga my girl... girl friend you say? She have yellow hair down back. She my bank,
my pretty bank! I see Olga, we go bars. We drink red wine to Mister Fineman. I sending cards, he sending dollars. We drink, laugh, do much love.
Mister Fineman happy. He pay quick always. I pay kopeks, he pay dollars. I much happy — Olga best bank in Helsinki.
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