BIFOCAL UNIVISION
supplied the illustration
FALSE MEMORY
The mist is cold, the world is grey;
To think we met on such a day!
*
Back then it seemed as though the sky
Were echoing the 'You-and-I'.
Surely the sky that day was blue!
Surely the mist was pearly dew!
Surely the golden garden seat
Was fashioned for we two to meet.
As I recall, the conversation
Reflected the joy of our situation!
I saw the love-birds in the trees!
I smelled the perfume on the breeze!
I saw the flowers! Who could forget
The glory of the day we met?
*
You laughed at me, lovingly, in time....
' Nothing about it was sublime!
It was cold and damp and grey and bleak;
You and your hearts-and-flowers mystique!'
I heard you speaking mockingly;
I should have guessed you were mocking me.'
*
Now that you've gone I realise
We met under dark and lowering skies.
The mist was cold, the world was grey.
I remember it well, now you've gone away.
*
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HERE IS A FIELD
You asked for a poem about a Field....
Here it is.
Not unpleasant.
Rural, useful, cow-flecked.
Bordered by a straggling fence.
A Field is a workaday thing,
Rufty-tufty, ragged and unremarkable.
*
Ah! But, if you had asked for a poem about a Meadow,
That would have been a different thing altogether!
A Meadow is
Billowing,
Lush,
Smelling of sweet clover.
It is inhabited by bees,
And young lovers hidden in the grass.
It is surrounded by snow-clad mountains
And overhung by blue skies and the whitest of clouds!
If only you had asked me for a Meadow
I could have written a proper poem!
*
