Poetry & Prose by Carol J Forrester
This was the house with the old kettle
squatting short and fat on the rayburn,
a singing throat gurgling
to be lifted with care
from the hot plate.
Oil fire constant
within arm’s reach.
Shall we have another cup of tea?
Two wrongs don’t make a right,
but two lefts, plus two lefts
take you back to the start
and two sponges make a Victoria,
though two birds can’t make a bee
and two books are a sequel
not a cycle.
Two days are forty-eight hours
and not nearly a week
even when they feel like it.
Two attempts are still just a start,
two attempts just the same
are quite often a mistake.
Two trips means you’ve forgotten,
three trips means write a list
two lists,
in case the first gets forgotten,
two people can ignore each other,
two people in a small space
will likely try to ignore each other,
one person might not ignore the other
and one person might wish two people
would go their very separate ways.
Two redrafts might not be enough,
no redrafts is laughable,
two rejections for every acceptance
is a very good acceptance rate.
Two poems should not be the same,
not exactly,
two moments
two loves
two lives
will never be the same.
You are here now, though not quite part of this world just yet.
Suspended inside me, you are growing into yourself,
becoming a person, becoming someone waiting for the first fall.
He wants to know why
I’m so bothered by such a small
incidental thing.
Doesn’t understand
the ratcheting wind in my nerves
has been so slow,
so steady,
so long in the build up
that any reason is good enough
to make me snap.
I am very good at sweating the small thing,
like watermarks on a kitchen counter
that are really tea stains
from what must have been the teabag chucking Olympics
because the kettle is the other end of the room,
as are the mug, and the tea caddies,
and oh yes, the sugar!
In fact the milk is the only thing not that end,
unless you were the one doing the brews
in which case the milk is also that end
because heavens forbid it should live in the fridge
where it might just survive to its use-by
instead of souring like my expression
whenever I come downstairs to find dishwasher
empty!
but no space to move for dirty plates, cups, bowls,
all stacked smallest to largest
in cracked crockery Jenga challenge number sixty,
guess it’s time to see what’s on sale
in the supermarket kitchen department.
Writing and Works