‘nothing but hints and traces, nothing known’, things ‘not quite there, / but not quite inexistent, nonetheless’.
John Burnside
Do you remember the farm with no one there?
the stones crying out when the wind whipped
window and door; paneless, unhinged.
As we passed, the washing line waved
from the kitchen garden. Agèd brassicas
long gone to seed yet she was still there
almost there, the woman of the house
an outline pegging the clothes, gazing
into the hedge. There too a bag of sheep dip
snagged, emptied, yet no flocks seen.
Only a sorrel horse baring yellow teeth.
And guide book in hand we found the pub;
wary of the three-legged dog, bark and bite
ever ready, to deter all passing trade.
Instead an ensemble of insect and bird.
One 'For Sale' sign leaned heavily
and the silence of closure spoke
in soft, hoppy breaths behind the great oak door.
Then trampling all the garden's undergrowth
through the arbours, rambling roses
showing us to empty tables. We unpacked victual
and water bottle, aware of watchers above.
Faded curtains moved, a broken quarter light
puffing out dust, three odd socks strung across
the zig-zagged glass.
Do you remember these treasures
still? The lovely empty enclosures
of our intimacy, our threshold.
There's been turmoil since
a tearing grief with tears strung between
like dewy webs across an Autumn hedge.
This the legacy that love leaves, death as vacancy
but afterwards, subliminal to the solitary
those flickers in flame, a company of quiet ghosts,
and that most patient of waits
for reunion.
For Dora’s Poetics prompt @dVerse we are writing “Poetry in Liminal Spaces” –
PoetryPix 