Flanagan phoned – left a message

Flanagan phoned – left a message
 
‘hope you’re well
I’m down your way
be nice to catch up –
I’ll bring some photos’
 
Flanagan had a forename
she doesn’t use it –
I never heard it
 
she lives alone in a pink-washed cottage
on the white horse coast of Mayo
painting wistful landscapes –
gentle reminders of buried days –
despite her arthritis
 
since her transplant she’s been teetotal
she claims she doesn’t miss ‘the drink’ –
I don’t believe that for a minute
 
we’ll talk old times,
sip china tea from china cups
 
‘two cubes or one?’
‘none for me, I’m sweet enough’
 
I’ll show her some small thing I’ve written
she’ll murmur ‘I love it’ – but won’t mean it
 
she’ll unveil tasters of her paintings;
Clew Bay from Croagh Patrick,
a crumbling cottage outside Westport
a lighthouse, a plough,
a man bagging peat –
a lost world evoked
 
we’ll sit in the garden
in the last of the sun
 
‘why weren’t we lovers? we had our chances’
 
‘we let them slide by for moments like this.’
 
 
 
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Bhi

Goodness me, this evoked some memories!

I’m thinking CH, that maybe men have one gene which drives this need to “hunt” love with every woman they see, for a moment picture what that life thread could be, and then another which tempers that so that we do settle down with the “love of our lives”.

Once this covid season is over we’ll have to share a few malts and bring out our tapestries.

Guaj

I remember this one, Rick and I still feel that special feeling (which I can’t quite describe) that I got when I first read those last two lines.
It’s thing like that which makes poems better than good.