Poems

Mandy Pannett lives in West Sussex where she is a creative writing tutor. She also supports several local writing groups and runs an Arts Cafe. Her first poetry collection ‘Boy’s Story’ was issued, with original music, as a CD. Two further collections have been published by Oversteps Books – ‘Bee Purple’ and ‘Frost Hollow’. Her work has been widely published in small press magazines and online. She is currently working on a new collection. Her poem below, “The God of Allotments” won Third Prize in the Sentinel Literary Quarterly Poetry Competition (July 2009)

Mandy Pannett

The God of Allotments

We were lovers for forty years.

Now you are dead.

Here on the allotment, others

will grow the scarlet runners, loving their blossom,

like you.

Why did we keep it a secret?

Guilt at reneging on vows?

Someone is threading up silver CDs in a bid to frighten the birds.

“mirrors for pigeons,” you’d say.

I don’t even know if they scattered your ashes or when.

Remember our shed – how we’d pretend

to be sorting out seeds and the door would casually

close?

At times I thought the walls themselves would collapse.

Shall I go down to our pond?

That very last time it was covered in scum.

You said it was hot, kept coughing-

Were you dying and I didn’t know?

There’s no-one to talk to now, about you.

Only the god of allotments,

if he is in.

We always thought there’d be time for us –

at least for mingling our dust together,

as lovers do.

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The Sentinel Literary Quarterly Poetry Competition (October 2009) is now open for entries.

Bobby Parker will judge. Learn more>>