Poetry Thursday. June

I'm sure the ladies of Poetry Thursday and all the marvellous contributors who have been writing articles and features deserve a summer break, and I'm hoping their summer will be wonderful, but I have to admit to feeling slightly bereft when I saw the gap there was going to be in my life. I've gotten used to the almost-constant presence of new poetry-stuff to read and think about, or not think about, but just soak in.

But, the good news is that through the summer, there will still be, as there always has been, a post on Thursday to which we can attach a comment with a link to a poem. So I realised it was up to me to put something here today. But what? What month is it? It's June. I trawled my past year's poems, and this turned up almost immediately. I'd forgotten about it, and now I'm glad I've found it again.

For Caroline

Our summer days, and you gone to the country,
to the sea. Back and forth the whole summer,
our letters, packets thick with happenings,
the kisses you got, sweet French words you’d heard,
and my pleas for more information.

Postcards wouldn’t work. We tore reams from school
copybooks, filled them up with girl-gossip
and mild bitching – why that one never wears a bra,
and when will you be home?

You were gone for good – banished – by the time I started
the trek to and from the high walls, through three gates
to cook a bland meal and home to sleep the afternoon away,
exhausted from the prison-strain, the being watched, the fear.

But then, and always since, and still, your first picture hangs above
my father’s reading-spot, great blobs and streaks of reds
and pinks – a vivid chrysanthemum world: one of a series
you churned out, more and more wild,
more and more colour, just before you went.

If I were to start a letter now, one of our girl-letters,
I’d have to tell you that it’s June, and there are
no kisses here, no sweet words, and there are
tears, more tears than I could leave on a blue-lined sheet,
more tears than I can even name.

And what might ease them?
A packet in the post, a tight wad of pages,
looped words, your cartoon-jokes,
a word from you. Your memory.

------------------------------------------------------------------

This week's offerings from other Poetry Thursday participants will be found HERE