Next up in our series of our winning poems is Paul Blake with his entry: This morning.
This morning
on the station platform, boy in cheap suit
with brolly, girl in Superdry top and jeans,
smooched under those drumming jungle rains,
exuberant vines entwined, ready to fruit.
Her face so lively, so ill-assortedly lovely just
in its intensity of focus on him, that you could trace
the dawning of his thought: love’s a level place
(ahlan wa sahlan!)* on which to come to rest.
But when I brushed your lips – bruise-delicate
and succulent as figs – before I hit the road,
the rage and prickle of your morning stubble
against my own reminded me: however hesitant
the kiss, love’s also riot, floods, and flames, a toad
that squats upon the heart and feeds on trouble.
Paul Blake is a retired medical writer who has worked for international organisations in London, Amsterdam and Copenhagen. He has had poems published in a number of journals and anthologies and a chapbook, A Massacre of Hummingbirds, published by Stonewood Press.
* Arabic welcome, literally ‘(you have come to) people and level ground’
The Kent & Sussex Poetry Society 