My Grandmother’s Folding Desk

34. 5 July 2021

My photo. The mess is worse now.

I sit here at my grandmother’s little desk,

Antique, folding, tiny, modest,

But with a leather desktop.

Typical of my Hungarian grandmother –

Modestly arrogant. Proudly humble.

I’m glaring at the page.

It’s a very nice page, A4 with lines

In a solid case-bound notebook,

With place-marker and elastic book close.

Surely a fit place for my deathless poesy.

Every day a poem or verse or doggerel…

*

(And what would catterel look like, I wonder?)

My eyes droop shut and dreams slide in

Between the skin of my eyelids and my cornea.

I can see some all ready to dive in

But they vanish at once if I open my eyes

And see a trailing line on the paper from when

I dozed off seeing damsels and parcels and trains

And knights and grass and concrete towers

Inhabited by jaguars.

Dreams are so close and far away.

They vanish like clouds.

Sometimes a cathedral.

***

I still have her Olympia Splendid 66 typewriter too.

Coffee?