(for Annette)
Always you try to love
despite constant rejection.
Music is velvet around a craving heart,
do not speak.
Fill a room with flowers,
rearrange furniture
help build a bookshelf
paint walls white.
Do not let old lovers recognise you
while new trees are weeping into spring.
Vietnam is far away, decimal coinage
and the revolution.
Pine trees rain-sodden, laugh
under a dusty carpet,
mind colours hurt eyes.
Pollution and too many people
spread to disorientate the peace that lies
just beyond the most vivid dream.
Only is love real,
when walking slowly away into a dawn
That you do not try to stifle and possess.
Léonie Scott Matthews
Artwork: Godfrey Old