Annick Water
by 
James Graham
|
Posted: Sunday, November 8, 2009 Word Count: 369 Summary: This is in my 2007 collection. Just below the poem I've done a very blatant promotion, aimed at new members. All comments welcome, including critical ones. |
Annick Water
I think I came to taste
the sweet past here,
like rose-hips,
not the collapse of years.
But here's John Hastings' house,
torn beyond cure;
enduring, as stone will,
far, far too long. Through all
my childhood, he was old.
Gassed in some wasteland, cast
out coughing from the butchers' war,
he sold best suits, and gents'
and ladies' boots and shoes,
out of a horse-van. In the year
of the flood, rooks
racketing overhead, the rioting
Annick at his door,
his sick wife calling, he willed
the water and the wind away
and eight miles laboured
to the doctor's gate.
I see the woods have lost
the tree-house tree,
my secret neighbourhood;
- I would have mourned then
if a wind had taken it -
my neighbours too, companionable elves,
the girl with the riding hood, the wily wolf,
the bears and their fair visitor, ghosts
always, now seem grass.
I find my name here, gashed
in a ridged ash-bark.
Easy nostalgia, like a comfortable
breeze, I really
wished for; not these
edged gusts, remembrance-
bearing, as it were December.
Annick Water - version 2
I think I came to taste
the sweet past here,
like rose-hips,
not the collapse of years.
I see the woods have lost
the tree-house tree,
my secret neighbourhood;
- I would have mourned then
if a wind had taken it -
my neighbours too, companionable elves,
the girl with the riding hood, the wily wolf,
the bears and their fair visitor, ghosts
always, now seem grass.
And here's John Hastings' house,
torn beyond cure;
enduring, as stone will,
far, far too long. Through all
my childhood, he was old.
Gassed in some wasteland, cast
out coughing from the butchers' war,
he sold best suits, and gents
and ladies boots and shoes,
out of a horse-van. In the year
of the flood, rooks
racketing overhead, the rioting
Annick at his door,
his sick wife calling, he willed
the water and the wind away
and eight miles laboured
to the doctor's gate.
I find my name here, gashed
in a ridged ash-bark.
Easy nostalgia, like a comfortable
breeze, I really
wished for; not these
edged gusts, remembrance-
bearing, as it were December.
I think I came to taste
the sweet past here,
like rose-hips,
not the collapse of years.
But here's John Hastings' house,
torn beyond cure;
enduring, as stone will,
far, far too long. Through all
my childhood, he was old.
Gassed in some wasteland, cast
out coughing from the butchers' war,
he sold best suits, and gents'
and ladies' boots and shoes,
out of a horse-van. In the year
of the flood, rooks
racketing overhead, the rioting
Annick at his door,
his sick wife calling, he willed
the water and the wind away
and eight miles laboured
to the doctor's gate.
I see the woods have lost
the tree-house tree,
my secret neighbourhood;
- I would have mourned then
if a wind had taken it -
my neighbours too, companionable elves,
the girl with the riding hood, the wily wolf,
the bears and their fair visitor, ghosts
always, now seem grass.
I find my name here, gashed
in a ridged ash-bark.
Easy nostalgia, like a comfortable
breeze, I really
wished for; not these
edged gusts, remembrance-
bearing, as it were December.
Annick Water - version 2
I think I came to taste
the sweet past here,
like rose-hips,
not the collapse of years.
I see the woods have lost
the tree-house tree,
my secret neighbourhood;
- I would have mourned then
if a wind had taken it -
my neighbours too, companionable elves,
the girl with the riding hood, the wily wolf,
the bears and their fair visitor, ghosts
always, now seem grass.
And here's John Hastings' house,
torn beyond cure;
enduring, as stone will,
far, far too long. Through all
my childhood, he was old.
Gassed in some wasteland, cast
out coughing from the butchers' war,
he sold best suits, and gents
and ladies boots and shoes,
out of a horse-van. In the year
of the flood, rooks
racketing overhead, the rioting
Annick at his door,
his sick wife calling, he willed
the water and the wind away
and eight miles laboured
to the doctor's gate.
I find my name here, gashed
in a ridged ash-bark.
Easy nostalgia, like a comfortable
breeze, I really
wished for; not these
edged gusts, remembrance-
bearing, as it were December.