Three Poems by Susan Wilson

 

Matthew, Sofia and Lola  

When the frost drags its nails across grey granite 

and its frozen grip has choked the flowers, 

you will find me sitting beside the headstone. 

I wear this weekly routine, in all seasons, 

like a comfortable set of old clothes. 

As usual there is no sound as the trio arrive, 

having turned the corner in the distance. 

Matthew’s warmth requires no woolly hat, 

Sofia’s size tucks her neatly into the buggy 

and Lola bounces around like a fluffy beige ball. 

Less chat, more treats dad! she barks, 

while conversations lengthen and Sofia smiles.  

 

Matthew is about to enter the corporate world, 

a place with which I am all too familiar,  

so, I warn him of unsavoury characters ahead 

as if I were wise enough to advise him. 

As my goodbye becomes their homeward walk, 

I realise I have been sitting in an armchair 

in the room of somebody else’s life 

but hopefully I will have left an impression 

like the gold inscription upon the headstone 

that will prompt a different conversation 

between a father and his daughter 

on a cold winter morning yet to come. 

 

Asteroid AD 2032  

Beside the road there is an oak tree. 

Daffodils are dancing around its trunk 

and their oranges and lemons are speaking 

for the bells of a church that is far away. 

Nearby a pile of broken concrete slabs 

is enclosed by a circle of traffic cones 

and their reds and whites are speaking 

of a hazard that is directly ahead. 

 

Spring is stirring from its winter dreams. 

It peeps out to see the daffodils and cones 

but the wind’s chill sends it back to sleep. 

 

They say an asteroid is coming in 2032. 

Seven years. Right now another matter 

is raining down upon and all around us. 

The unimaginable of seven years ago 

is here to impact, to disrupt and to destroy. 

The carefree and the colourful who danced 

are calling out to that same distant church –  

a pile of broken concrete slabs, abandoned. 

 

Danger’s breath may not always blow a chill. 

They say an asteroid is coming in 2032. 

I think it is already here. 

 

Rotator Cuff Injury  

There there. 

I shed a tear today. 

I had worked too hard and smashed the glass 

with the flick of an innocent brick. 

It’s a mess in there. 

I am sure. 

Repair men at my back door. 

The front window still broken. 

All these months. 

My daily prayer like a spoken graffiti. 

How long?

Susan Wilson lives in East London and began writing poetry following the death of her mother in 2017. Her poems have been published by Lucy Writers, Snakeskin, Runcible Spoon, Dreich, Areopagus, Streetcake, Rue Scribe, Amethyst Review and Lothlorien. Prior to the pandemic she was a regular performer at “Spineless Authors”, a local open mic event. Her debut chapbook is “I Couldn’t Write to Save Her Life” (Dreich, 2021).