Inspiration
She fell in love with a poet.
It was absurd the lengths she went to
to get his attention.
She gave up her job as a teacher,
followed him from reading to reading,
bought every available book on 'The Beats',
studied zen and haiku,
brooded over the best minds of her generation,
but all to no avail.
Day and night he wrote by the window of his study,
oblivious of her
and of the crows that perched
on the telephone wire
mistaking his words for food.
To impress him, she began to write.
Soon, she was dismissing Kerouac and praising Whitman.
She wrote villanelles in her spare time,
wrote sonnets about failed love affairs and men
who, when kissed, became even more furious and ugly.
She filled notebooks, taking care to date each page
and carefully detail the place they were written.
It was consuming
and she found no time to return to his study.
In fact, she grew old and famous
and when asked to what she owed
her years of inspiration,
she smiled and said:
the image of a window
and perched on the telephone wire
frail skeletons of crows
waiting for genius.
© Graham Nunn
3 Spring Poems
1.
when we finally reach
the Daffodil Garden
humidity rises
she and I
want to fall
just the way we are
into soft grass
and fuck
right beneath clouds
curled in the shape of a heron
2.
daffodils open
spring lids
spray pollen
along slope
where sweet
release comes
mouthing soft
perishable lips
push finger
deeper in
to flower
3.
since it's her duty
Spring comes
in innocent repetition
making men mad
me mad
bright seed
cast
into dark earth
© Graham Nunn
Saltwater
walking the dunes five-thirty pm
fisherman thumbtacked to the edge
of water the pure Dali of tailor
with their necks broken flapping in
plastic buckets & the sky vermilion
hand-holding at dusk thoughts smell
like dirty dishes rinsed clean by
skipped-stones & another game of
noughts & crosses goose pimples
on your skin like stars as sandpipers
hurry through darkness a cold moon
waiting for clouds with a net & that
first kiss almost religious
© Graham Nunn
