Two poems

MOONBEAMS

“Moonbeams, sadly, will not survive in a jar.”

Roger Mc Gough

Dark shadows will chase sunlight

from a windowsill. Rainbows

have no anchors and they float away

Fires consume dry grass, turn bush to ash.

Plucked flowers lose their petals one by one.

But stars, long dead can still shine on.

Their rays, far from their source speed through space

to reach us as we stand here in the night,
hold hands and look up at the sky

 

PORTRAIT IN THREAD

I look across my room to where

a new embroidered picture hangs,

a picture of a girl, dark-skinned, red-lipped

head held in tattooed hands.

Coloured threads

laid down like painted brush-marks

show her sorrow.

Stitched into the cloth I see

exquisitely expressed,

the compass of her pain.

And I see

Another girl, blond head

bent over wooden frame. She holds

in delicate fingers a sharp shiny needle

and stabs into a canvas cloth

over and over again.