My Poetry: I Watch The Ships Pass

I watch the ships pass

While holding your favourite flower

For Love, like friendship,

Is one long monologue.

I remember the Bookshop

And Kefalonia,

And Boundary Road

Where you introduced me as an old friend.

Remember how we shared kisses

That year Christmas missed us,

Or you singing

A ballad from a hospital bed

About wasting your youth, on being young;

And how, soaked in sadness,

I hid from the sun

An abstract reduction of hope,

A wildflower with no earth.

Now,

After the mourners depart

I recite notes from a Thursday morning

To an empty chair,

The prophets of love

Turned back into ghosts,

Notes on a destiny, ignored

Like a late night apology.

Why? Does the lie and truth

Move like glass

We were the daydreamers once

Now it’s easier to be lonely

By candle light on a gin evening.