A more welcome change for me recently was the annual observance of Flannelette Sheet Night, which always falls around this time and which is, I think, the best night of the year, when autumn starts to bite and the bedding becomes ever so slightly fuzzy.
Here's a poem which mentions flannelette sheets, although the real changes in it are far more fundamental. It was partly inspired by the death of DJ Derek in 2015, and was highly commended in the International Welsh Poetry Competition 2018 earlier in the summer.
where he lay undiscovered
In the never-quite-dark
of those first summer nights
I heard police helicopters sweep
overhead
seeking the heat of suspects in hiding
trespassers, burglars, car thieves,
murderers,
cannabis farmers.
It was blow flies that found me.
After the buzzing, lascivious squirms
the memory of rotting plums forgotten
in a fruit bowl,
then squadrons of beetles homing in
the family of foxes that fed on my
lungs,
the bone of my shin.
As for
you lot driving past
after
tiles for your bathroom, this week’s fashion
upgrades
for last year’s mobile phone
who
don’t notice me in elders and brambles
on your
daily commute to your home,
there’s
no need for guilt.
You’ve not ignored insects
crawling on windows
snowdrifted mail behind a glass
door
and I like it here. Already
a second year is turning,
I wait for dead leaves to tuck
me in, ground frosts
soft as flannelette
untongued,
undone
I don’t
call out.
Beautiful
ReplyDeleteThank you! x
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