Poem

Looking at our Drawings Back at Home

Yours was aptly moody, the foreground a true
russet for the earth you’d rubbed in but mine
was a morass of spring, lime, chartreuse,
lawn and sea greens; the wheat shoots
graduated lime covering half my page, blind
to the sky’s threatened collapse; and more:
the curb walkers who eyed us like informants;
the only three cars out there being red and estate,
my expectation of wounding by salt; the tank with the
105mm Howitzer gun fronting the bare farmyard;
the trials bike that would have stopped but for its
emphysema; the tidy swallows random, messy
flight paths above the lake; the medieval moat
house wall caved in; the ‘no swimming’ sign
before a field of rye; the long windy track
cull-de sacked; the pub dark and de-peopled
as in time of Plague; the barwoman’s startle
reflex; the pike fishers in the print who came
over like poachers. So upon reflection, I fed in
some forest and dark green shadow. Doffing
my hat finally, to the death all around.

Debbie Jellings
Bristol, UK

An MA Creative Writing graduate with a distinction (University of Sussex 2006-8), poet and poetry fanatic. Published once to date in the Aesthetica Creative Works anthology (Jan 2009). Calling kicked in for real in December 2006 when I discovered I was infertile. Working on a collection.

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