It's Still Life

Everywhere Poems don’t have a subject. They have a starting point and follow wherever attention leads. It’s — go for a walk and see where you end up.

26 May: A Kitchen Window Poem

It’s 36°C, and I have winter on my mind.

Cold driven deep into stone.
Winter’s heart.
Air sharp as glass.

The kind of cold
that takes the skin
from winter’s bone.

Then bows out
to roses,

their scent racing
through the open kitchen window,

making room
for the garden queue of

lavender,
purple chives,
thyme,
foxglove,
tansy,
dandelion.

Potatoes are boiling. Twelve minutes.

Eggs cooked hard.

One shell split —
white spilling in soft clouds.

Onion chopped.

Almost potato salad.

The kitchen timer wakes him
from his afternoon nap.

its small voice
inside his silence.

He talks in his sleep.
Only Danish.

Dad used to roll beneath the bed
when he slept.

The sound of a lorry.
An aeroplane overhead.

He said he only felt free of it
out at sea.

The sea called him,
he said.

He saw men dive into the burning sea.

I would hold him
until he stopped drowning
in memory.

But the sea
always returned him there.

I miss
how much he loved me.

Same as we ever were.
Same as I am now.

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Some images created with Midjourney; all writing is authentically my own original work.©Misky 2006-2026.