Fanfare

by Madelaine Nerson Mac Namara,    © 12.02.2014


Backed by road and railway
the long, down sloping
rose and dahlia garden
leans onto the dockyard.

We've never met
our landladies
the two sisters
who plotted and weeded

now garden the tropics
for their widowed
brother in law
a retired missionary.

We re-address correspondence
to the Republic of Antigua.
Their own letters fanfare
flamboyant stamp designs.

Across the bay
grey tongues of mist
spell October
to red woodlands.

We drink rum and orange
pick out on the globe
from powder blue ocean
their golden dot new home.

In winter the sea fog islands us
peering from window seat cushions.
On those cotton wool days
only the Hoover can silence the fog horn.