SIMPLY WORDS

Here’s a romantic one for St Valentine’s Day, published in my 2011 collection, Strange Journey, dedicated to my lovely wife, Jane.


 
FOUND POEM

I wrote something for you: a poem

or maybe it was simply words
that you might choose to call a poem,

then lodged it, folded, in a book;

but you have half-a-thousand books,
so years may pass before it drifts,
ghostly, like a pale pressed flower,
into your lap.

Then you, while seeking Larkin’s Toads
or some nostalgic Betjeman,
will find instead
my soul’s elusive fingerprint,
the true
embodiment of love

or maybe
simply words
that you might choose to call a poem.