Two Poems by Sue Tanton

Green Hat

I was knitting a green hat
the week we had all the news.

It went quite well; five needles,
a pretty pattern and growing
fast, pleasing to the eye, soft to touch.

Then all the week, the case kept altering,
the case kept altering
and in the end,
everything was different and everything was changed.

And when I looked, I could see
the yarn was not enough
for the hat to be finished.
So I slipped out the needles, pulled
the yarn
and the hat was unravelled,
just like everything else.

 

Violet: 17th June

Gone so long, and still I miss you.
You went, when I was not here
to say goodbye, when I was
there and returning, when I was
in another place and could not tell
you goodbye.

You left without me.

I missed you. I miss you.

We stood in a church and sang.
Some cried. I tried to put the
pieces of your going together in my
mind, and the summer I had
spent in northern cities collided
with your falling and your
leaving
and would not fit.

It all took time, the travelling, the visiting, the looking,
the falling, the lying, stretching out
for days; three weeks.

I missed you, and you left.

Long gone; still missed. Today,
the seventeenth, I send you love
through all the time to find you
where you are.

 

Above image by Anna Pleskow