ROSEMARIE BARR

★ ★ ★ ★

POETRY

Image by Jackson Hendry

At the Lake’s Edge

A space between us on the bench,
we watch our reflections

waver on the surface

spiked with bright spots

from the moon.

Moths brush our faces.
We think of bats

the way they swoop round rooms

not touching: their bodies soft-furred

dark as the night’s instincts.

A carp kisses the surface
ripples water in widening circles.

but we never see him dance

between the weeds

at the lake’s dappled edges

before we walk home

hands in pockets.

Black Hole

I sit on this sofa’s edge.
You talk of red giants, white dwarfs
and stars so small and dense
their atoms fuse together,
become invisible.

We sit with a space between us,
but even here I feel the pull of you.
You are my sun, and I’m in orbit
just outside your event horizon
beyond which nothing can escape.

If I approach too close,
allow one kiss, one gentle touch,

I’ll be sucked towards you.
My atoms would fuse with yours

and all my life would be
crushed out of existence.

For you, nothing changes.
I ask a million questions

but you never reply.
You take all my light

absorb all admiration,

give back nothing.

Cellophane-wrapped Flowers

‘Move back to Manchester,’ my grandson says.
I shake my head.
The trees, the pavement’s edge, the red-brick houses,
even the smallest things hold memories

best forgotten.

We walked the cemetery together, his mother and I,

between rotting oranges around the Buddhist graves,
rain-sodden teddy bears
and the man filling a wheelbarrow
with cellophane-wrapped flowers dropping petals;
things that are supposed to remind us
all things die.

‘I’d hate to be buried here,’ I said.

She shook her head, looked up into the canopy of trees,
seemed to be listening to the sound of wind and leaves,
heard an inner voice and said, ‘I like it here.’

We slowly retraced our steps beneath the trees,
silent now as we walked past graves
plastered with photographs of the happy dead,

back to the hospital and into the ward

where women screamed and rocked in corners.

My grandson, a baby then,

won’t remember how I carried him

back and forth, back and forth
between hospital and home.

Now his head bobs to hidden music.
‘Manchester is great,’ he says.
He doesn’t remember how she died
or how he once patted her face
and smiled at her.

She often thought of dying,
said, ‘My only regret would be
he won’t remember me.’