Categories
Poetry

The Absent Sailor

Sunset

Letters

Those love letters from the seventies
I could not bear to read again
and could not bear to throw

Those airmail forms
those tortured lonely twelve page laments
that I read and read so many times
in my cabin off Cape Town,
in Melbourne and Sydney:
So many words
So  much love

But in the end
They were just ash
And I scattered them

Ashes to her ashes

First published in Mostly Welsh 2019 (Y Lolfa) p.92

By Chris

Poet and writer: I have travelled the world in the Merchant Navy, worked on the farm where I now live, and re-invented myself as an information scientist. Born in Sussex, I moved to Swansea and have lived in the same farm cottage in mid-Wales for almost 50 years.

I have two collections of poems in print, Mostly Welsh and the recent Book of the Spirit. Although initially entirely focussed on poetry, my writing has branched into short stories and my first full length work of fiction, The Dark Trilogy and the collection of short stories - When I Am Not Writing Poetry - are also available.

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