YAYYY HELEN!

OMG! A writing friend of mine here has just heard her book was accepted by Alfred A. Knopf publishers in the US.
It's her first novel, so it's wonderful to get such a top notch publisher for it.

Knopf is a division of Random House and published three of the Pulitzer prizewinners this year!

Congratulations Helen, that's wonderful!

Sunset

Particles of birds decompose the lawn
where the cat discarded them.

I pluck my eyebrows into a new shape
after ten years, though it does nothing
to disguise the burgeoning creases
around my eyes.

I look at others my age and wonder,
'do I look like them' - worn
around the edges, a little too
well travelled.

Beyond my cemetery lawn,
the Norwest arch opens its cavern of light
above the Alps like the road into the future
at the end of a movie.

Coming Out

At 3am I woke to a sound -
scratch, scratch, scratch,
at my wardrobe door.

I opened it
and out stepped a black cat.

I put many things in my wardrobe:
shirts, trousers, jackets,
the occasional dress, shoes -
but never a cat.
How can a cat come out of my wardrobe?

The same way disdain
and disappointment
can come from a marriage
when all you put in were hope
and love.

Small Beginnings

Sunshine dances with the curtains
across my blue duvet.
Not the golden fullness of noon,
but the thin light of first day.

With you I feel bright
like fresh cherries
on a sliver of morning.

Slipping Through

When a star falls
is there enough magic in the sky
to hold it open while we slip through?

Katherine Mansfield looked for heaven
in the French countryside
and in the charcoal sky
along the English coast.

But she was alone
and when she called to her love
he wouldn't come.
And you won't come,

even though there's a star
falling in the sky
and I'm holding open
the entrance to heaven.

I think I must slip through alone.

And you will call for me
along all the stony charcoal shores,
through fields pastiched
with grass and wheat -

I'll leave you my money,
since that was what you cared for most -

but when you call my name,
in all its myriad forms,
only the sunlight will answer

its rays more beautiful and constant
than I have ever been.