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A Whim – Robin Maunsell
The George Crabbe Memorial Poetry Competition
1986 Crabbe Memorial Competition – First Prize
Adjudicators: Edward Storey, Edwin Brock
For Stephen and Pearl
Where mist weeps and car lights are beads
we pick a damp way to a country wedding
in April. Someone will pull out the stops
for happiness. I think of love and memory and weather.
Later, between service and reception, we drive
deeper into this county, past make-shift
piggeries, the ghost of a wartime airfield,
down a road that is always whispering
under an abetting sky, to find domestic trees
patient for our arrival. We are looking for the grave
of my grandmother who died in … the year dumb
as these village crossroads at midday; a small jar
of sweets as the thick curtain rose, smile
from a photograph: memory translucent for an instant
as we scour the annexe for her stone,
but to no avail. Whim somehow washed away
in the swirl of time, marl, sunken roads we negotiate
to kiss, shake hands and wish you well.
Copyright © Robin Maunsell 1987
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