The Greater Landscape / Dry Arrangement by Geoffrey Aitken

The Greater Landscape

it’s raining
in the garden

unwelcome
during any mid-summer
of memories

when
the cold creeps
& the breeze stiffens

or in later stillness
it sounds

i’ll not do love again

not for laughs




Dry Arrangement

flowers
do not recall
the
departed

loosened
until shifted
on breezes
before ground to earth

new tributes
freshly laid
only become
later season detachment

we have been too ardent
gathering the fallen
who’ve taken leave
or gone beyond

to other altars

Geoffrey Aitken writes from the edges of mainstream in South Australia on unceded Kaurna land where he manages and shares his lived experience with local (AUS) and international publishers in (the UK, US, Fr, CN, and CAN). May at ‘State of Matter’, ‘Radon Journal’ and ‘Hole in the Head Review’,(US).