Wendy Klein

West Sussex, UK

 

US born Wendy Klein, a retired psychotherapist, is published in many UK magazines and journals including ‘The North’, ‘Poetry Salzburg Review’, ‘Oxford Poetry’, ‘Under the Radar’ and ‘The Interpreter’s House.  She is also the winner of many UK competitions, notably Ware (2009), Torriano (2010), Buxton (2014), Cinnamon Press Single Poem (2014).  She has three published collections:  ‘Cuba in the Blood’ (Cinnamon Press, 2009), ‘Anything in Turquoise’ (Cinnamon Press, 2013), ‘Mood Indigo’ (Oversteps Books, 2016), and a Selected, ‘Out of the Blue’ (The High Window Press, 2019), and a pamphlet, ‘Let Battle Commence’ (Dempsey & Windle, 2020).

 

  

Poem written 15 April 2020

 

Bags

 

of time – great saggy burlaps of it,

worthy loose weaves,

patchwork models, hand-stitched

with crazed love on rainy days,

the sort you barely remember now,

ones embroidered in front of log burners

on winter evenings of the past.

 

Bags of time you dreamed of

as a wage slave, commuting

to-and-fro from offices where you

laboured in front of computers:

writing reports, answering phones

and emails offering advice, solace,

random cheer. Now you have it,

 

bags of it, what do you do with it?

Drift, more than likely. All that time

to write, all those bags to fill, papery,

bio-degradable, and you just sift

through the pages of your life, noting

nothing but the passage of it, swift

and stealthy day after day.