ILLUSIONS NEAR THE END

Morning haze

on cool valley fields,

under pink pre-dawn clouds,

again; this late July landscape

evokes endless memories

of summers and mornings

long gone, like nothing

would have changed -

and everything has,

and slipped between my

vainly grasping fingers.

30.07.2021

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IN LATE JULY

The nights grow darker,

this  all-too brief summer

of the dying years,

burning, approaches

its end - the moments

when time shall make it one

darkling memory

in the necklace

of dimmed pearls

called our life.

28.07.2021

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IN TIME'S FOLDED EMBRACE

In this cool July night

of darkening summer,

in its dark blue embrace

all the white nights

I've loved here,

and just a short walk away

my loved ones,

in time's folded embrace.

26.07.2021

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CATS AND DOGS

 The cats keep dropping things,

the dogs get awkward

like it would be their fault,

so I give them bits of food

when they come tails

between their legs

and with worried eyes,

while the cats,

tails held high,

saunter past.

25.07.2021

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THE LOYAL WIFE AT HOME

 It tells something that Penelope

is never said to have

stood on Ithaca's shore,

not once in twenty years,

longingly looking

for a sail to appear

in the horizon.

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FATHER

  As I walk back the familiar road,

turning the tree-coated bend,

and in the darkening July

night see the lights in the window,

it's still hard not to believe

that you are sitting there,

preparing to go to bed,

to read a bit before falling asleep,

with your dog waiting

the moment to go under the bed.

Yet you are both dead,

there are only a pair of old cats

in the kitchen light

I myself left on,

and the weeds grow tall

in the yard.

10.07.2021

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AFTER A FACTORY FIRE IN BANGLADESH

 A padlocked door, 52 dead,

and a missing 11-year-old

labourer; tomorrow

these facts will be

forgotten, lives

and deaths

erased.

10.07.2021

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THE SUN, IN THE DUSK

The Sun, in the dusk,

the golden rim

of a darkening cloud.

10.07.2021

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IN THE JULY DUSK

In the warm July dusk,

cool ashes of a life;

in the silence of absences

 afternoon's thunder.

10.07.2021

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WRITE ABOUT THE OTHERS WHO FADED BEFORE US

Pointless to write

about our own deaths

waiting beyond

some fold in time,

as death itself

will write a grim poem

to be witnessed

by the unhurried medics

and the calm undertaker. 

04.07.2021