Cath Walsh

Cath Walsh grew up in Washington, D.C. and London and read English at St Catherine’s College, Oxford. After spells in London and Paris, she now lives and works in Oxford.
Contact: cwals014 [at] gold [dot] ac.uk

Anyway So

 

The problem, I find, it’s harder and

Harder to pretend it all adds up to more

Than a big fat zero because there’s nothing

And no one and the more times you see it –

(I remember that June when the cherry blossom

And he came back and everything

Was okay again) – you start to weigh the

Novembers  as more than the Junes.

What’s the

Point if the leaves

Will just fall.

 

When she went in for chemo then

Got well, then got sick

Again I’d followed avidly but

Now I just wait without caring

Really. She died anyway

So

Drip

 

The November day, seen

From a fogged-out bus seat

Drips onto dull fields.

I remember Christmas lights

On a throbbing street,

Bike lights, bus lights,

Cab lights, the flight

Of crowds dissected

In their flock by traffic.

The smell of a city, gasoline

And nutty caramel.

Remembering all this,

I turn to the wettened window

And regard a flat sky,

Five trees, some hill.

The aching blank of the rural,

Repeating nothing, giving nothing

Back.

Leiston Abbey

 

Hydrogen, Paul told me,

Could be added to itself

To make power.

 

Watch for the unity, he meant; the bonds in graphite

Like the patterns of flint on the Abbey walls.

 

I stood to look at stones

And later sat to feel them, smooth and dull

On the dashboard.

Where I end and they begin,

The gap between us.