Untitled Document

LANDLADY DAPHNE WAS…

Graham Burchell

a long bent switch of willow
that would curl to the final throes
of evening in the eaves
of her tottering house
of oddities and me

there she would rest her voice
dream in Russian some nights
and purr if the moon
through the dormer window
was blotted by rain

rain drummed her soul's cold rhythm
strummed all the tiles
in her long bent street
hid from the minds of clubs
shops traffic-lights pub

street that dipped to remnant spirit
of moss and a long brook's ghost
one she inhabited
until toast and her morning thoughts
thrummed like spattered rain

over resident guests
at the breakfast table
with its navel of
great aluminum teapot
gray as a Monday sky

Graham Burchell was born in 1950 in Canterbury, England. He is the winner of the 2005 Chapter One Promotions Open Poetry Competition, Winner of the 2006 Hazel Street Productions Poetry Contest, the runner up in the 2005 'Into Africa' International Poetry Competition and a runner up in the 2006 Ware Open Poetry Competition. He is also nominated for a 2006 Pushcart Prize. His poetry has appeared in many print and online literary magazines. His first poetry collection From The Right Side of the Pond will be published by Sun Rising Press in 2007. He is the editor of the online poetry journal, Words-Myth, and he now writes full-time from his home in Houston, Texas.