Things that Comfort Me Now
Pink primroses
clustered
in a rockery garden
Magnolia thick
with milky-white buds
ready to burst
the playground on the Rec
where my children told secrets
and couldn’t wait
to grow up
track by Peter’s house
smell of brambles and soil
chocolate Labrador
barking hello
worn path across the ridge
spread with healthy
emerald grass
my coat tight as skin
birds rattling songs out
an evening chorus
by the tennis courts
light draining into dusk
scraps of other people’s poems
friends – their words
rain on my face
wind like the roar of the sea
arriving home
opening a book
taking each hour at a time;
never looking ahead
or back.
This year Cathy Whittaker has published a sequence of poems in Quintets (Cinnamon Press) and had poems accepted by Orbis, Envoi, and Poets on Loan. She runs writing workshops with a colleague www.openmindwriting.com