Michael Fitzgerald-Clarke

(Origin French, ‘scene for action’)

for Maryline

Beauty forms – a woman is
eighty-eight, her inner girl is a recurring
pert memory. An inkling of heaven
heals, again you are a waitress in the
Tumbetin Tea Rooms, where poets wander in,
their coffee cups and their words belong.

People can be gods, or acrobats, or
join the eternal sublime joke as
small, starry-white flowers. Anyone
can be a butterfly, a Galápagos tortoise.
Don’t hurry your lunch, it may take
seven years to muse on the scattered petals
of time. Live by a centuries-old smile,
it won’t become dust in our November winds.

You left happiness in another city. It found
a red pair of flats and walked for months.
It stopped at an old oak tree, and in
the sweet shade knew you once more.