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Selceted poems from Dandelion Time, |
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by Jeff Rees |
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Illustrations © by Rachel Verity |
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THE BAILIFF |
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I’ve held him back too long |
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and now he shakes me |
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like a savage cur |
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that won’t release its bone. |
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That hard old man, |
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that Jack-in-the-box, |
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unwelcome marriage of pain and loss, |
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springs and grins with his painted teeth |
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and chews me daily into grief. |
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I’ve kept one step ahead for years |
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by changing my address, |
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by using guile and devious craft; |
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but now he hammers at my door, |
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that bailiff come to claim arrears, |
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to clear my stolen overdraft. |
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I have no cash for tears |
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and no more tricks to side-step my regret, |
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so I must stand aside and let him in |
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and settle my accumulated debt. |
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REGRET FOR MARY |
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I heard of you just once or twice, |
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in muffled conversations, barred to me, |
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that carried little then |
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but something undefined and lost, |
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a misty border, veiled and snared, |
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that I was loth to cross. |
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I’d hear my mother, tremulous with tears, |
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her sewing put aside, express your name; |
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and ‘Mary’, soft as dandelion time, |
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would thread our room with longing and despair |
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and then be blown away by sighs, |
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with only my father’s soothing hands |
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and whispered comfort in the air. |
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And yet, I don’t know why, you come to me, |
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companion that I never had or knew, |
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and it sometimes seems as though you shared, |
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in some obscure and silent way, |
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my childhood games and fancies, fears and hopes, |
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that as I did my growing, you grew too. |
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And now, so long delayed, so long, |
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I tender you a fifty year regret — |
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and wish so fervently that I could offer more — that the part you played in all those days |
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was no more than a softening breeze |
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upon the window pane, |
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a fleeting shadow on an open door. |
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