Maybe not today

Couldn't resist visiting the wonderful 'Far From The Madding Crowd' bookshop, when we were in Linlithgow the other day ...

... picked up the pictured, newly published, 2023 'Forward Book of Poetry' and here's one of my favourites from with - by Carolyn Jess Cooke:


Thinks Will Work Out

Things will work out.
Maybe not today, which has sadness
running through it like ore,
the mineral-tasting wind knocking cans
across the street and the disconsolate sea
banging its head off the desk.

You wonder where all the fog has come from.
Not the fog that creeps
in every September,
smudging the streetlights, but one
that's been made
from the scraps of your life.

The fears you believe in – know – are
coiling around your heart, your lungs
building up a muscle
you don’t realise you have. Somewhere
beyond here, a river is bending to velvety stones
along the bank, listening to their news.

On the hillside where you used to play
spears of emerald grass are folding
under the weight of rain. Jewel by jewel,
water passes to the earth, and the blades
strengthen to sun again. A storm fritters
to breath. Traffic gathers. Things will work out.

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Carolyn Jess Cooke (1978 - )

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