The Stalkers

They come en masse and they get me alone,

I hoped I would forget.       

I furtively tried to banish them all

to the dark corners of an oubliette.

But they just added fuel to the fire,

now whispers ricochet.

Recollections play snakes and ladders

with the words I was unable to say.

These ungraspable wisps how they haunt me,

they echo and they moan.

I cannot swallow back the un-uttered,

cannot silence the regrettable drone.

© Laura Howard 2012

Stay

And so winter has come,

stealing back that all too powerful hour

and with it,

the light.

Hours pass like silhouettes

through ephemeral days 
that emerge, 

hesitate,

then ruefully shrink away

towards the empty corners

and pointless edges of my room.

All that remains is a stifling gloom,

and sadness,

lying low on bare floorboards.

These walls around me are porous,

life and time seep through them

and away.

Nothing can stay.

©Laura Howard 2012

You

You are a stone coloured slumping giant,

quiet at the side of the room,

an enormous hulk of hillside,

soft mounds of scattered earth,

the comfort of the deepest slumber,

solid, loyal,

forgiving,

a soft place to fall.

So why do I always choose the leather armchair? 

© Laura Howard 2012

a minor chord

Each day the light comes a little earlier,

and slowly

spring begins to bleed through

the grey peripheries of winter.

But as green buds and shoots

bravely push their way

out of cold, dark branches,

and cherry blossoms begin to form 

pink fists of petals,

fat and full,

somewhere else

there is the pull

of a minor chord.

Winter always turns to spring,

no matter the force or depth of want,

we cannot amend or alter anything

that has gone before.

© Laura Howard 2012

Depth of Field

The lessening light

struggles to filter through

a lens of grief,

and days are measured

in time lapsed frames

of solitude and shadows.

Somewhere in between one hour

and the next,

lost in the depth of field,

I wait...

as the grainy black and white

slideshow flickers around me

and plays and plays...

©Laura Howard 2012

Queen Square

Hermetically sealed in that small room, 

we enmeshed ourselves around you, 

surrounded you with our familiar noise,

forestalling the encroaching gloom from entering

that strange white womb from which we knew 

no birth or life would come.

And you lay central,       

still,                                

with your question mark scar and gentle frown,    

in a gown of blue and yellow,                

on sheets that weren’t meant to be yours.               

Face turned away from the door,                

your soft, shallow breathing an underscore, 

as triangles of bright red paper -                               

the children’s cards -                                                  

with love for you scrawled hard, in felt tip pen,             

hung like flags from the drip stand,                       

fluttering with each slow turn of the fan.

The world outside no longer existed

as we persisted with our resistant vigil,

and time expanded into emptiness.

With someone always holding your left hand,

we stayed until you had to go,

creating a tableau which will linger:

A shadow in our minds and an echo in time

that whispers, ‘We love you so much, we love you so much.’

We do not remember the view from the window.

© Laura Howard 2012

Still..

and though the final moorings
of the now disparate armada
are but window sills and hall tables,
though he that crafted
each bough and mast
with tanned hands
and tender heart,
though he has crossed the bar,
and can no more be seen
than shadows in the dark,
still       
he stands on anchor watch,
as the sun illuminates the motes
of dust falling upon sails
that will never fill with wind.




© Laura Howard 2012

Stopping to remember something I'd forgotten

I too have promises to keep. 

They were made long ago,

Made in the sleep

Before coming into being.                

                                                               

Beneath lifetimes they lie hidden.

Once upon eternity

They were written

Somewhere in me like a blueprint.

Distant dreams I vaguely recall.

I'll pull them back to me

And make them all

My golden rules, my mission.

© Laura Howard 2012