Poetry by Maureen Wilkinson
Only This
This poem won 4th Prize in the National Poetry Competition 1988 and was published in Poetry Review. It's included in my collection THE BLINDMAN GOES FROM A TO B published by Peterloo Poets, a signed copy of which may be PURCHASED HERE...
ONLY THIS
The grief is so close to the joy that it flickers and
flickers and flickers, until we are blind with it.
Only a seaside town, an afternoon
of golden weather, like a state of grace.
Above the sky hub where three roads converge
some wheeling pigeons spin a hollow drum
of tin-bright flight. People along the pier
sit basking, that their flesh may self-forget
itself in pleasure; briefly they become
ocean, pavement, distance, shadow, child.
An infant in a pram opens his eyes.
He invents sky. He ripens like a loaf.