Postcards in a Paper Bag

On the last night of my stay
we went to Blackburn
to hear the Hallé orchestra play
Beethoven’s fourth symphony.
It’s not the music I remember,
but our drinks at the interval –
your tomato juice, my red wine;
your home-made pork curry we had for dinner
before we set off, washed down
with lemon barley; ham sandwiches
for supper hours later at the same table.
Mark Elder spoke before the encore,
I don’t recall what he said.
We hadn’t been far that day,
just into Burnley, to the market,
I bought us morning coffee at Asda –
‘elevenses’ you called it. I still have
the postcard I bought, in the tartan
paper bag from whichever shop I got it.
There was no point in sending it
on my last day. I don’t know
what happened to the poster
of Haworth Moor you bought me
at the Parsonage the day before,
why I didn’t frame it like those
of Charlotte and Emily, or even keep it
as I did the postcard of Anne
when its frame broke.
That’s in the same tartan bag
as the one of Burnley.

-Peter J. Donnelly

Honoured and delighted to have two of my poems bookend this marvellous reading by Wendy on the theme of “Ars Poetica”. Thankyou, Wendy.

Bios And Links

-Peter J Donnelly

lives in York where he works as a hospital secretary. He has degrees in English Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Wales Lampeter. He has been published in various magazines and anthologies. He recently won second prize in the Ripon Poetry Festival competition.