The First Time Of Now
One of our lifetimes before this, was
in a meadow
in June, the beast of sun bruising
green grass gold,
fragrant juice of trampled flowers,
wide-eyed
daisies and wild cowslips crushed
beneath
my scarlet skirts, folds of my dress
fanning
the ground, embroidered bodice draping
the round
of my shoulders. Today the ghost of our
love is woken
from a lifetime long, long ago in a
land we used to know.
It is unmistakeably us. You and I below
the blue
expanse of a summer sky. Air stilled in
breath-
lessness. Us wandering beside a brook,
me gathering
white florets of water lilies in a
shallow woven basket.
It is us in a time before this. Your
hands mapping my bones
and the criss-cross of my veins, the
pink flush of skin roused
just as it is, in this first time of
now. Love finding its
way. The winter lilies in a vase
tucking scent into memory.
Flowers
Frost comes late this year.
November already and until now
skies have been balmy-blue
unbuttoned shirts flapping
in temperate breeze
but today the promise
of winter tightens around
my bare ankles.
I rescue the last of the Rose-
Of-Sharon from the tangled
mess of what is left of the garden,
wrap their thorny stems
in a scrap of dull pink felt
tie them together with
butcher string and give
the bouquet to a dear friend.
You always bought flowers
on a Saturday morning
always delicate-petaled freesias
those skin-thin blooms
in colours I never cared for
but the delight in the gesture
spoke more than the gift itself.
When the flowers stopped coming
I should have read it as a sign,
but back then what did I know
of signs or how to read them.
Faint lines of white powder
carelessly left on polished porcelain,
hammering heart against my chest
(your heart not mine) as all those
little lies frosted stars around our heads.
The Shape of Water
In those years when we declared
this was our home, we spent
glorious, endless hours by the ocean
sun-basking not for the ripening of
colour
on skin but for the sizzle of heat
that would send us into the waves
cooling our bodies which were surely
cooking beneath our nakedness.
In those years we would bob
through the waves, two seal heads
slick and dark bent together
in the shape of water, secrets shared
far from shore, the language of
bareness
hidden beneath sea-blue birdsong.
We would stay in the water until
the pads of our fingers pruned
and the heat had seeped into the sea
and the shiver of the sun’s rays
was no longer enough to warm
our water-logged bodies.
Only then would we return to the
scorched sand
and to all that had happened while we
were gone.
Susan J. Atkinson is an award-winning poet and the author of two full length collections, The Marta Poems (2020) and all things small (2024) both published by Silver Bow Publishing. Her most recent publication is a chapbook, Alice In The City, published by Anstruther Press in Spring 2025. To find out more visit www.susanjatkinson.com