His young mistress
He went down for the last time.
She can’t help smiling
through her tears
at that thought,
on hearing his wife
found him stretched out
at the bottom
of his beloved garden
after a fatal heart attack,
his face buried
in luxuriant undergrowth.
Another minimalist poem that says so much. Full of sexual overtones and undertones. I thought lines 4 and 5 were a little clunky. Maybe you could a neater way to say the same thing. An unexpected but fine addition to the Maymam collection!
Neat, funny, complete! Brilliant the way the mistress makes that wonderful metaphoric link – rather than a “poet’s voice”. Despite the unfunniness of death, we too can’t help but smile with her!
are you thinking of a putting together a collection of poems Jonathan? the title of your collection could be something to do with newspaper headlines – do you read a newspaper everyday? I am just curious to know what inspires you. I did an exercise recently which was interesting. It was with complete strangers on-line so it wouldn’t work for the Cross Border Poets (unless it was tweaked) but we each had to post a piece of writing and the reader had to work out whether or not the piece was autobiographical, a piece of observation, and other stuff which I won’t bore you with. It was interesting because the autobiographical writing stood out a mile and most people admitted that their writing was usually autobiographical. Not that I am saying you have a nice garden or anything.
Interesting thought – I suppose if a poem strikes a reader as being so true and real that it must be autobiographical, then the poet has succeeded whether or not it actually was.
go on – spill the beans