Poems Rethabile Likes

After an Absence by Linda Pastan After an Absence After an absence that was no one’s fault we are shy with each other, and our words seem younger than we are, as if we must return to the time we met and work ourselves back to the present, the way you never read a story from the place you stopped but always start each book all over again. Perhaps we should have stayed tied like mountain climbers by the safe cord of the phone, its dial our own small prayer wheel, our voices less ghostly across the miles, less awkward than they are now. I had forgotten the grey in your curls, that splash of winter over your face, remembering the younger man you used to be. And I feel myself turn old and ordinary, having to think again of food for supper, the animals to be tended, the whol...

Warning by Jenny Joseph Warning When I am an old woman I shall wear purple With a red hat which doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me. And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves And satin sandals, and say we’ve no money for butter. I shall sit down on the pavement when I’m tired And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells And run my stick along the public railings And make up for the sobriety of my youth. I shall go out in my slippers in the rain And pick the flowers in other people’s gardens And learn to spit. You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat And eat three pounds of sausages at a go Or only bread and pickle for a week And hoard pens and pencils and beermats and things in boxes. But now we must have clothes that keep us dry And pay our rent and not swear in ...

A Month of Happiness by Robert Bly A Month of Happiness A blind horse stands among cherry trees. And bones shine from cool earth. The heart leaps Almost up to the sky! But laments And filaments pull us back into the dark. Night takes us. But A paw Comes out of the dark To light the road. I’ll be all right. I follow my own fiery traces through the night. Poet: Robert Bly Source: @PoetSeers Books: @AbeBooks