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
...

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,
...

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,
...

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

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.
...

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
...

There is a vacancy at my supper table,
seven of us instead of eight:
we are one short at the head.
...

north winds breathe far scents
of arctic homelands -
brent geese are restless
...

Your half-moon glasses still sit on my bedside table;
a wardrobe is full of your clothes and faint floral scents;
your sewing machine I've now donated to a good user -
I'd be only too pleased to buy a new one if you could object.
...

we have walked this path, you and I,
along the ribbons of old sea walls
and threads of muddy tracks.
...

Colman's Mint Sauce, grown in Norfolk,
how ambiguous you are,
with your apposite art nouveau label,
your square and traditional glass jar.
...

after opening your book at the right page
I first read all the good words and they
make me feel good.
...

I wish you could see with me
this slow greening of the fields;
the push upwards of daffodils
through thawing crackled gravel.
...

the old wooden chair on the terrace
hasn't moved since you left it at the
end of last summer; not even north
winds could blow it over nor shift it
...

Remember our record player?
That anthology of melodies?
Tijuana Moods and Ravel's Bolero,
Carmina Burana and Gerry Mulligan,
...