Tag: doors

Ode To My Father

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When I opened my mouth
It was you, yes, who spoke;
When I then fell asleep
It was you, yes, who woke.
You colluded with love
And waters then broke.

By the skin of my teeth,
No skin on my nose,
You scooped all the futures
And curled up my toes;
No bedtime stories
And nowhere to go.

We drove down to Dorset
With one empty seat,
I rushed to the school gates
With no one to greet;
You opened a door
And the door was my Fate.

Daily they’re grieving
In pubs and the streets
For those overboard
In the bayou and creeks;
My numbers are letters
And the letters are Greek.

Blue Door

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A door is here before me,
Painted lower blue,
It has a personality
As much as any door might do.
This door said something to me,
And hoped to expound
Profoundly about
His love of locks and keys
And things like this which fit
Sometimes perfectly,
Although I can’t be sure
Because I am not at all
Proficient in languages
Of barriers between here
And there, in this case
Made from old oak trees.

Sometimes he would be drunk
And talk at length about how
Things were better in the past,
When doors like him had respect
And weren’t just for walking through.
Sometimes he turned maudlin
And sad for people’s passing hues,
Who only caught a portal,
And missed his greater truth.

He is permanently locked up now,
Shackled, chained and bolted;
No one visits the other side
Since the gardeners all revolted.
People continue to walk by
On their way to shops
And markets brimming with fish
And semi precious stones.

Where there are weeds, I see Time;
Where there is pollen, I see potential;
Where there is a door like this door
I see what did and didn’t happen,
And that’s why I’m still here
On a shore distant and remote
From all I adored about you.

Death Of An Obsessive (Twelfth Sonnet)

NickLeave a comment

Lunch after Sunday, a walk with our dogs,
Over stiles clambered, some lumberjacked logs,
Through cowpatted herd-fields, a traced rabbit path,
And beyond the axe-pond where sometimes we’d bath,
To find that cottage, abandoned and dark,
From lintel and jambs hanged swallow and lark;
Roofs sunk to woodworm, gnawed holes from the rot,
A cracked window showed the home of a sot.
Children had played on the rosebay-raped swards,
Supper’s at seven, your heels on the boards;
White linen’s fresh, pegged to washing lines sang,
Before words turned beneath ivy to slang.
These losses framed by a mind’s fatal breath;
An airbag inflated, scene of a death.