Valentine’s Day: a love poem by my friend Kathleen Kummer. She lived and worked in the Netherlands when married to a Dutchman. Poems from her debut collection Living below sea level featured here on 25 June 2018. To celebrate our 20-year friendship, I will be posting more of Kathleen’s unpublished work over the next few months.
Hiding Place
Like a holy relic rarely exposed,
they lie in a drawer, not handled,
let alone read, for half a century,
their violet ink on airmail paper,
your, my, dried blood on a membrane
which is beginning to flake. If touched,
it would instantly turn to dust. If read,
the dried blood would flow again and burn.
The drawer is hard to close: coarse strands
of pain, regret and grief obstruct it.
I am able to ease it with the memory
of lying with you by the sea, unseen
by those who walked through the marram grass,
throwing up little showers of sand on us.
Nothing has been as soft,
as caressing as the sand dunes that summer.
