One hundred geraniums
 
No steampunk engine, no onyx dashboard,
no timepiece whirring as the world unwinds…
I ride a dry leaf to travel in time.

Citrusy astringency in my palm
hot-wires one hundred dead geraniums
in my hippocampi, to blaze again

from my grandmother’s terracotta pots.
A man. A boy. Bridging two worlds.
I wonder at my own hand opening.

 

Peter Kenny writes poems, plays and prose. He co-hosts www.planetpoetrypodcast.com with Robin Houghton. Poetry publications include Sin Cycle (e.ratio, New York 2020) The Nightwork (Telltale Press 2014) and A Guernsey Double (2010, Guernsey Arts Commission). He blogs at peterkenny.co.uk.