The Randell Cottage Writers Trust is marking National Poetry Day (22 August 2014) with our own online poetry festival, a series of poems by Randell Cottage poets (a term encompassing our residents, trustees and committee members).

 

The first comes from novelist, poet, essayist and Friends committee member Maggie Rainey-Smith.

 

Love in the Fifties

She wore a second-hand,

button-through frock

covered in rosebuds

 

a belt at her waist

of the same fabric

and black patent shoes

 

he wore corduroy trousers

a silver cigarette tin in his

back pocket and carpet slippers

 

they paid half a crown at the

turnstile and Tex Morton sang

‘Old Shep’ on the slow ride

 

she loved candyfloss and

he lost his front tooth

to a toffee apple

 

they marvelled together at

the half-man half-woman,

the one white thigh

 

he proposed on the ghost

train and she screamed

as the skeletons rattled

 

she wore a hat with

matching gloves and

carried a small bump

 

they stoked the fire together

and the hot water rumbled

over the red roof tiles

 

when the ditch was filled

with rainwater and he

was so full that he fell

 

she dried his clothes on

the rack above the stove

where the roast rested

 

And there’s more; more

than the rain and the

lost footbridges; barbiturates

 

This is only the start

but who

has the time nowadays?

 

Maggie Rainey-Smith
First published in 4th Floor Literary Journal 2010, Whitireia New Zealand Creative Writing Programme