Tag Archives: travel

Love From Budapest

You showed me the apartment in Budapest,

phone held up in front of you

as you turned in slow circles,

laughing at the heat and mist outside.

 

The next day,

the ones of us still at home gathered

and scanned the Grand Prix crowds

for a familiar face.

 

Grandad called to say he’d done the same.

but you’d been hidden near the pits

you explained that night on FaceTime,

glorying in something you loved.

 

You will be back there this year

to watch them roar around the track again.

I will miss you just as much.

 

 

I found this poem pretty much fully formed in my draft folder with the date April 17th 2016. Thought it was time to dust it off and get it posted nearly two years later.

Moments Of Magic

The memory has lost some of its sharpness,

like a photo with dog-eared corners

and thumb worn edges

rediscovered from somewhere forgotten

and old.

But I can still feel the scratch on my palms

of chunky stone walls

marching onward towards the shore

where the sea swam darkening

around the ruins of an ancient fort.

While the sun sunk beneath the waves

and I squinted for a sight of Ireland on the horizon,

and the sky turned red and orange and pink and…

green.

A single streak of emerald,

old news to the locals,

but pure magic to me.

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Stranraer – Scotland

Inspired by today’s Daily Prompt: Vivid

 

 

The Story Of Eleanor Green

Grandma travelled the Sahara at eighteen,

all she needed packed in two suitcases

the one

almost forgotten

later

on at an airport  in Ciaro

when a young man asked her name.

At twenty-five she saw India,

found a husband on the roads

took her father’s disapproval,

wrote a book

Love In India

Then lost him to the army

and swore against rings on fingers

till her last breath.

Paris was calmer in her words.

Less heat

more classical sheik

in restaurants, and a cafe.

Sipping champagne on the Siene

but thinking still in India

of a man and a smile,

of spices and music.

Beirut was exciting.

Claimed she met Philby,

under the cover of darkness

in a little bar off a corner.

Claimed she kissed him,

took his stutter in her mouth

thought him very proper.

In England she tried to settle,

never married

but lived

with a man her father favoured once.

A friend who thought her beautiful,

gave her children

and ears to tell stories.

At ninety she left

with a will naming India

as her home

where she wanted

to return.

They took her ashes,

scattered them across

all the roads that they took

and watched for a man

waiting by the crossroads.

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Paris Bound

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Paris. The city of love, of romance and she was almost there, just a few stop and a fanfare of screeching breaks would announce the arrival of Miss Tanya Fay, New York’s most elusive model. Betsy crowed into the window beside her, their bodies juddering in time with the train as the French country side slipped past, snow still deep on the ground, hiding any indication of the past thirty years from the passengers.
“Mademoiselle, perhaps you and your comapinon would like the come back inside the carrige?”
She turned to find the conducter stood behind them. Polite smile firmly in place as the rest of the carrige shot them dark looks from behind books and newspapers.
“I’m afraid the cold is coming in,” he explained. “Some of the other passengers have complained.”
“Oh let them!” laughed Betsy, pulling Tanya towards the window again. “Who are they to complain about us?”

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