Four Poems by Peter J Donnelly

 

Instead of a Card

I could send you an email
to wish you a happy birthday.

I could say I am thinking of you
on this first one without your partner

who died six months ago.
I might try to comfort you by saying

I came upon your book last week
in Barnardo’s at Monk's Cross, 

that I would have bought it
had I not got it already,

but I’ve said that before to another poet
or something like it.

Somehow I don’t think you’d be consoled
to know that someone 

had given away your words
unwanted, instead of keeping them

on the shelf to read each year
till they start to remember lines,

notice a word you seem to like to use,
for you use it again and again. Purl.

Female Poets 

I read your books over and over again, 
try not to copy your styles, borrow lines,
ideas, or address every poem to one of you.
In many cases I thankfully can't, 
for I would struggle to write about dolls
and their houses, though that didn't stop
me trying. I did have a teddy called Suzie,
I don't remember what happened to her,
she can't have been chewed up by the dog
like Peter Bear, for she was replaced 
by Sheila long before we got him.

Another theme you seem to share 
is learning to kiss, practising, 
on a mirror or a pillow.
I certainly never did that, 
though used to hug the aforesaid Sheila, 
pretend she was a child and I a grown up,
that I was not tucked up in bed
with her under the covers 
but standing or sitting 
in some imaginary house or cottage,  
a waking dream before dreaded sleep.

Our Grandfathers’ Rings

I don't know why I hid it from you 
when I lost the gold letter T
from Grandad’s onyx ring.

You didn’t notice I wasn't wearing it 
all those weeks it was at the jewellers 
having a new one fitted. 

So I thought you wouldn't notice either 
that the new letter T
was much larger than the original. 

Still I didn't come clean, 
to this day you think it was your father 
who got it changed. 

I don't mean to blame you, 
but I think it may be because 
you never told him when you lost 

your own grandfather’s wedding ring,
didn’t dare visit your dying grandmother 
in the nursing home for fear 

she'd see it wasn't on your finger, 
worried that the truth would kill her
like a fatal overdose.




Tuesday’s ‘Guardian’

No valentines for me,
or at least not yet,
but instead something better -
my article in the paper. It’s been
online for a while but today
is in print. I stopped at No 1-4 News
on Whip-Ma-Whop-Ma-Gate
to buy the paper on my way
to work, as in another age
I would have done every day.
Then I’d have had the right change
but today paid with a £5 note
which once would have got me
two weeks worth of newspapers
not two days. I opened it as soon
as I got outside despite the freezing
fog of a February morning, knew
no-one would stop me in the corridor
to tell me they’d seen it without me
making a copy and splashing it
over social media which with
my old camera I couldn’t do.
I still cut it out, stuck it in the album
with photos I took on that camera
of the same lady in the article,
and the original of the card
with her drawing of a reindeer
reproduced in this morning’s paper.

Peter J Donnelly lives in York where he works as a hospital secretary. He has a degree in English Literature and a MA in Creative Writing from the University of Wales Lampeter. He has been published in various magazines and anthologies including Ink Sweat and Tears, Black Nore Review, Obsessed with Pipework and High Window. He was a joint runner up in the Buzzwords open poetry competition in 2020 and came second in the Ripon Poetry Festival competition in 2021. He is the author of a chapbook The Second of August and a full length collection Solving the Puzzle.