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Simon Fletcher |
Simon has had work in many magazines and anthologies and has had two collections published by Pennine Press. The first of these, The Occasions of Love, was enjoyed by the late Ted Hughes. He is a literature development worker for Wolverhampton Libraries and an advisor to ACE, West Midlands. He will be running a second series of Poetry Cafés in Shrewsbury this autumn/winter.
Portrait of my Father with Angels
The bike was motionless until repaired,
No toys were made or tractors tilled the ground
Until quite fixed and fit like summer birds,
Which only make that journey south when sound,
And in their time the angels called from choirs
But you lay still and would not move, concede
It might be right to sing you up the stairs,
Or even that they had the right, indeed.
This firmness was a measure of your life.
As practical and workmanlike you’d grown,
Where safety first, your family and your wife,
Was ‘number one’.
So now your spirit’s flown
The angels, surely, will arrange what’s meet
For you, a finely hand-carved, wooden seat.
Attachments
We send emails from screen to screen
and cannot say just what we mean;
by telephone we talk at night
but never quite get down to it.
We post each other words and signs,
but fail to read between the lines;
to meet at station bars we plan,
end up, by chance, in no-one’s town.
We text abbreviated thoughts
about our day’s successes, doubts;
our lives a constant round of gigs,
our schedules full of pure success,
and in our dreams convince ourselves
we choose to live alone our lives.