("Write a poem about a teapot," my Tutor, Martin Corrick, told me. At twenty, I was editing for D.C. Thompson in Dundee, on a Pegs' Paper called 'Red Star Weekly.' How often the senior editor would lecture me with that cliché: "Make them laugh, Boy, and they'll like you; but make them cry and they'll love you." ...... And there's not much else you can do with a teapot other than chuck a bit of pathos into the infusion.)
Dusty teapot, lying in some corner
Of an attic, underneath the dormer,
Cobwebbed vignette, symbol of some past time,
Memories flood back telling of the last time
In summer, on a rustic lawn in Kent,
She poured the tea; and you breathed in the scent
Of lavender and fragrant rose and her,
And felt again the old emotions stir.Stroke the cheek and feel again the texture,
Fine bone china, patterned Royal Worcester,
See the shapes, the flutes, the lines, the colour,
Whilst in the darkened attic you remember
Fine boned cheeks; and echoes come to taunt you,
Fluted laughter drifting up to haunt you,
As in the dusty loft you stand alone,
Her memory with you - even though she's gone.
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