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Highly Commended, Torriano Poetry
Competition, 2006
Warning: when
I am an old man I shall wear walnut
lined with lilywhite
silk for cool extravagance
and
polished brass buttons that never show fingerprints,
and
an earthen hat and boots that will never suit
and
alabaster armour arranged fastidiously with a wink and a grin.
I
shall whisper to my mole and worm menagerie
of
places they never dreamed of, over fine nettle wine on a warm
evening.
I
shall practise my horizontal gait, ungainly at first,
until
I hit my stride and kick the lid with rage at the grass ceiling
stifling
my ambition, keeping me from rising
to
my proper place as a blue sky thinker.
When
I am an old man I shall hide in my wooden nest down there
long
before that old woman in purple
with
the silly red hat and the brandy and the slippers in the rain
stops
her bloody showing off
and
joins me.
Stephen
Elves
(with
acknowledgments to Jenny Joseph)
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