2 MORE POEMS

A couple of poems recently published in Poetry Salzburg Review. Hope you like them:

MY ETCHINGS

On the margins,
simply inexpert,
of pages' stuffy smell,
like medieval maps where half-way down
unknown regions began, imagination scrawled
women and their parts.

When no-one was looking,
I etched sweaty things,
cartoon body-bits,
breasts and arms and legs.

A body had a smell all its own,
alone and breathing, slightly unwashed,
cheap paper curling yellow.


DUE

I have in the end to scribble something.
Not to churn out a commonplace commentary on her demise
would denote disrespect, unwillingness to observe due rites.

Not to scribble some drivel,
trite sentiments on the reaper, and our common fate,
would negate her, at least within my orbit.
We deserve more.
A few minutes of time, churlishly given,
records she had a life,
and it crossed at times with his or hers or mine.
We knitted together a bit of the frail twine
which patterns our length of time.

Grief and despair belong to her own,
in their houses,
but a minute or two of my time
is the least I can do.
I recall the plump space she filled
the wobbly line she walked
accented words she spoke
blue eyes which sparkled at me
during the crossing of our paths
in the time I was there.