Here's a thread on Dick Davis, our new guest lariat, from last year. For those of you who weren't here, I'm bringing it back to the fore, and over the next week I'll be adding several poems. Here's another sonnet, this one from the new book due in May.
Duchy and Shinks
Duchy and Shinks, my father's maiden aunts,
Lived at the seaside and kept house together:
They bicycled in every kind of weather
And looked across the waves to far-off France.
Routine had made their days a stately dance,
A spinsters' pas-de-deux, with every feather
Where it ought to be: no one asked them whether
They liked a life with nothing left to chance.
They showed me photographs of long ago--
Two English roses in a chorus line:
I said "They're lovely" as I sipped my tea.
They were too--at the Folies, second row,
Or down-stage, glittering in a grand design,
With every feather where it ought to be.
|