by Colette Bryce
Kate Clanchy is one of the eleven poets who came to Dundee last year for the University's readings series, Poetry at DCA. This poem is from her collection Newborn, due out from Picador in March. A new series of Poetry at DCA will commence on November 5th.
Rhymes for September
Your wrist sticks an inch from this spring's sweater
as you pick the first curled leaf from the water.
And the turn-ups on your trousers are two turns shorter,
and the sun's sunk to some kind of bathchair
angle, and a cat's paw breeze is rifling my paper,
flipping the dateline over and over. Where are
they now, our gold afternoons at the lido? This year
I meant to wax them over, store the picture
of us in pellucid water, two akimbo flies in amber,
all winter in the soot of my mind's cellar.
But only last night, now I come to remember,
I heard the boy next door start his meander
up the first four notes of a new trumpet air.
It was When the saints all spring and summer,
now it's How many roads? And there's my answer.