Blues and green

by Elodie Pritchartt
The Town
Highly Commended, May 2010
Judged by Fiona Sampson


The wind blew through yesterday.
Rain beat the petals off
the flowers on the catalpa tree,
pasted them to the pavement like reminders
that nothing lasts forever.

It scrubbed the troubled air pure clean.
All it left was the scar from
the car that slammed into that tree on
New Year’s Eve.

Wind again today and rain.
The tin roof beats a bittersweet tattoo.
Still life through blue bottles
on the sill. Be still. Listen. The rain
sounds like a hush overhead.
Hear it? That’s fate passing by,
for now.


What sounds a little banal to begin with – it’s very hard to achieve this kind of representation of a near-meditative state – grows in dignity and complexity (and you can hear it in the grammatical forms) in the final stanza. --Fiona Sampson