posted on 08 Oct 2016

Hopes by Karen Powell

Karen Powell lives in Leicester (U.K.), and has an MA in Creative Writing from Nottingham Trent University. Her poetry has been published in soundswrite 2015: an anthology of contemporary poetry, and various magazines including The Interpreter’s House, Ink Sweat & Tears and The Lake. Visit her at karenpowellnotebook.wordpress.com.

 

 

Hopes

 

Last night I could smell the heat of your skin

but you were as distant

as the evening’s bruised horizon

when we shared ice-cold wine

and candle-lit hopes.

 

We hung our clothes to dry

among the branches of a lemon tree

watched the slowly multiplying lights

in the hillside villages

listened to the constant cicadas

and heard the uneven cries

of an unseen woman.

 

Today our hopes are more fragile

than the bones of the house martin’s wing

we found on the path

to the white-washed harbour

where honey-scented flowers

hang like pink clouds.