Poem: The Lane

The Lane

Along the lane on either side

hedge shadows nearly meet.

A crochet of dappled light

patterns the narrow space between.

Gently, gently spring breezes blow

yet all around is butterfly quiet.

So, I watch red hedge flowers fall

and walk alone, but not alone ‒

our first child waking stirs within me.

Epigraph

there is no time, future or past

from stardust to stardust

ends are beginnings,

see

as evening’s mist curls close of day

along the valley floor

a newborn calf stands for the first time

what time is it?

it’s now

it’s always now.

Following retirement from teaching in 2011, Pat Lee started turning jottings and memories recorded since childhood, into poems. In 2012, she joined Friendly Street, and was first published in that year’s Friendly Street Poets’ Reader, with her poems appearing in that anthology every year since. Her poems have also appeared in literary journals and poetry anthologies, throughout Australia, and overseas. Diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2006, Pat received an Arts SA Richard Llewellyn Arts & Disability Emerging Artist Grant, in 2014. Her first collection, Nudge the Morning, was published in 2017, and her latest, A Spot in Time, from which today’s poems are from, was launched in July this year.

Readers’ original and unpublished poems of up to 40 lines can be emailed, with postal address, to [email protected]. Submissions should be in the body of the email, not as attachments. A poetry book will be awarded to each accepted contributor.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons / Stephen Pearce