John Short lives near Liverpool again after a previous life in southern Europe. He began submitting work to magazines and ezines around 2010 and now has over 240 poems and a few stories in over 80 print and online magazines such as The High Window, Ink Sweat & Tears, Fragmented Voices and The Lake. He’s a Pushcart nominee and his fourth poetry collection appeared last november (In Search of a Subject Cerasus Poetry 2023).

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Wilderness

I immerse in football
maybe to dispel the vacuum
that has arrived like a messenger
announcing this is how things
will be from now on.

You’ve gone but I wonder
if one day I might sense you
like a friend who claims
he saw his mother perched
on the side of the bed.

Our house full of wilderness,
(where once there was love
that flowed like a river)
at the edges of my vision
as I watch this football match.

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 Security

I recall my parents’ photos:
standing on foundations
alive with expectation
in an age of easy choices.
First base for a solid future.

Now life hangs by threads,
history an accumulation
of misdeeds to a sad present
where sharks bare teeth
and predators will eat you.

Adventurous and optimistic
they ventured overseas
to find a ring they could afford,
a promise set in gold
worn faithfully for decades,

her symbol of security
but now the thing is mine
the sharks and dealers tell me
jewellery’s not a given,
its value never guaranteed.

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Obsessive Compulsive

He certainly made life difficult
obsessing over bacteria,
bananas peeled with tissue paper.
After breakfast, scrubbing
in mad detail each knife and fork.

If anyone dared open a window
he’d be witless with anxiety
in case a fly should enter;
read endless articles on cholesterol
and minimising saturated fats.

Some could make an argument
he lived so long from such precautions
but most likely stress for nothing.
He died from plain old age
or those evil hospital diseases.

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Bindweed

My father is laying concrete
on that awkward triangle
wedged between our garage
and the one next door.
Mum watches from a deckchair.

I hang on the touchline
bothersome with questions,
getting in the way.
Our neighbour peers
through the gap and laughs.

Now that time has taken them:
mum, dad and neighbour,
I look at the concrete surface
newly visible, prolific bindweed
hacked and cleared away.

The triangle looks smaller
but the memory, sharp as sunlight,
shines through the years.
A footprint stamped forever
and for an instant they live again.