I Am Back
I am back, my love, but much has changed:
They have rearranged the waters
and carved a holy sink of stone
and brought their own memorials
which are significant to them alone.
But they did not fell the ash tree,
being not barbarians after all, it seems
and the hooks I left embedded in walls,
they have kept for their own purposes.
But for the rope swing I made for you they had no use.
Hard by the delphiniums,
our buried cats and budgies melt
back into the earth beneath fading names
and the thick wisteria you trained bends the iron bars.
They will never, ever, straighten the gates.
Clive Donovan is the author of two poetry collections, The Taste of Glass [Cinnamon Press] and Wound Up With Love [Lapwing] and is published in a wide variety of magazines including Acumen, Agenda, Crannog, Ink Sweat and Tears, Prole, Sentinel and Stand. He lives in Totnes, Devon, UK. He is a Pushcart and Forward Prize nominee for 2022’s best individual poems.