cahen thrips

Every autumn you took a photograph
of the last leaf remaining
on the Japanese cherry outside our window.
...

The weather forecast promised sun
but it rained on Birdsong instead;
so I stayed here and felt guilty.
...

you are chalk & I am cheese;
somehow you became my smorgasbord
while I write poetry on your blackboard
...

What does she see in him?
He reminds her of old books; that's what attracted her,
not his looks but
fragrance of his parchment skin,
...

today I framed two of your pictures
startled owl and lugubrious hare
displayed them on shelves in the living room
where previously walls were bare
...

don't write it in a letter
or send it as a text:
whisper it.
...

My dog can smell cancers, detect
drugs in lead-lined trunks,
is pretty good at finding truffles;
he'll track a murderer over wet moorland,
...

I'm never alone for Fancy is always with me.
She's sometimes coy and teasing; other times
she loops her arm through mine and holds me
against her. Often she emerges with tilted head,
...

This dog with mange shadows me everywhere;
I try to shake him off but he's determined
to stray into my life.
...

Your hair's bedecked with snowdrops;
at your feet the first greening of crocus
and in between a solitary golden aconite
pushes through the lignite soil's fuse.
...

All weekend I thought the wind came from the north
so I shivered with cold but then the evensong window
flew open and in you rushed warm ebullient and vital
to melt that icy coating I believed would be permafrost
...

My second deepest desire was to be
a secret ingredient of a vegan fish curry;
not to be eaten but to be set aside
because my heat is too much for the tongue;
...

Into my life walks a new companion;
a composed woman, perhaps a little shy -
when visitors call unexpectedly
she shrinks into a corner and hides
...

Anita touched me;
touched me once;
some instinct led her
to lay her hand on my arm.
...

on you I can depend - my best friend
you've never let me down nor left me here
sitting by the wall staring into stale beer
a pauper in a land of wealth
...

Remember how we often walked
the dog on a secluded beach,
how a low evening sun cast two
long shadows shimmering ahead of each,
...

here is the first spring you cannot see:
blushing blossom on cherry trees; honesty bowing
to southerly breeze; marsh marigold in primrose
frocks; blue of forget-me-knots; greening of the wheat;
...

High on a clifftop on the Isle of Arran we came across a bench with a wind-swept dome-blue view across broad Kilbrannan Sound and on to Kintyre beyond. Screwed to the backrest was a brass plaque engraved with memorial poetry to a (named) man who died far too young in 2001 at age 29:

Zo aards
Voeten in de aarde
...

The poet Julia Blackburn wrote:
'I am busy with death
And the fact of it
Because my husband died
...

who will bandage my bleeding finger
when i cut it on a blade
who then will call me in to lunch
i never learnt how to load a dishwasher
...