Today I am pleased to host a poem from fellow Maytree poet Clint Wastling, whose first collection, Layers, will be published shortly. Welcome, Clint!
Hi Tim, thanks for the spot on your blog. As many of your readers will know I’m an East Riding of Yorkshire poet. I think a sense of place and our place in history is important to point us forward. As a poet I have two types of work: poetry for the page and poetry I perform—though there is always a crossover! Thursday 10th October, it’s performance, when myself and a few guests do an annual fundraiser for Prostate Cancer Research. Nearly 12000 men died from this last year, a statistic we should never forget. The event is at The Monks Walk pub in Beverley and starts at 7.30pm.
I’m also looking forward to becoming part of the Maytree family with my first poetry pamphlet, Layers, due out later this year. David Coldwell has worked hard on editing and choosing the poems. I’ve decided on Sorting to illustrate my work as it has layers of time and is set in Whitby – my favourite place. Hope you enjoy it!
Sorting
When I walk by The White Horse and Griffin
on Whitby’s old Church Street
I remember trinkets found
when mum downsized to a retirement flat.
She snatched the box from me.
You can’t throw that!
This will give you some idea of our task:
place card holders, a receipt for grandparent’s honeymoon
dated 1935, confetti, a tarnished lapel pin.
Throwing away the past can be cleansing,
can be painful, always a little loss
and if we are preservers of the past
then I am growing toward mother’s view:
let others decide, let the future obliterate.
Letters read again, photos seen,
all the love there was evidenced
in all the love there’s been,
spent in a million kisses
a hundred thousand wishes
preserving all that’s gone before.
Names from this box of trinkets.
Now when I walk by The White Horse and Griffin
On Whitby’s old Church Street,
I remember that hotel bill and pause--
my grandparents walked through these doors
took their honeymoon here
where past and present meet.
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