Dorothy 250
Three poets hatch out of a hybrid car in Cockermouth
to remember Dorothy Wordsworth.
Her childhood home waits at the corner to join in –
I still believe beauty will show me the way –
“I can’t go with you on your journey,”
the stone support structure sings…
Any good teacher wants their pupils
to outgrow them. We muse
on Dorothy’s devotedness and its success:
greatness made out of day to day faith
in her brother, interface with Coleridge
and meticulous cuts of nature in the Lakes.
Laughing along the coffin trail, above Dove Cottage,
with writers I owe my output to,
the grip on the pinball machine that flings me
between the picturesque and the poisonous
loosens, slightly. We read William’s poems
at the graves-side; leave unspoken her decline.
Helen Fletcher
https://cargocollective.com/helenfletcherpoetry
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