One month on, a late-deal to Rome
then Capri, and Mam, always happy
at home, to cook, knit, do the garden
was sipping Campari in the hotel lounge
when I got back from the beach.
Look what I've bought, pet. Unwrapped
on the table was a small oval dish,
gold-rimmed yellow porcelain. A piece of real
Capo di Monte. Just what I've always wanted.
She picked it up, stroked her fingertips across
its decorated surface - three glazed cherubs
in relief, naked in a grove, frolicking.
Joan Johnston was born in Newcastle upon Tyne and lives on Tyneside. For the last 25 years she has worked as a writer in hospitals, prisons, day-centres and schools, and with women's groups, the homeless, and older people in residential care. She teaches creative writing on a freelance basis and in Adult Education.
Joan is a recipient of a Hawthornden Fellowship and her work has been widely published in magazines and anthologies. She has two previous poetry pamphlets - Breathing In (Flarestack, 1997) and About the Time (with Tom Kelly, MidNag, 1998) and three collections: What You Want (Diamond Twig, 1998), Orange for the Sun (dogeater, 2005), and The Daredevil: Scenes from a Bigamist Marriage and other poems (Red Squirrel Press, 2011).
Widow is taken from her new limited-edition pamphlet An Overtaking (Red Squirrel Press, 2016)
Joan's previous Poems of the Month are Blue Plaque and The Burning Map.
Follow the link for a list of other Poems of the Month.
Widow © 2016 Joan Johnston: used with permission.
Copyright of this poem remains with the poet: please do not download or republish without permission.