Lynne Taylor

Burnley, Lancs

 

I live in Cliviger, Burnley. My poems have been published in anthologies, and magazines including PN Review, Stand and Acumen. My fundamental fascination is what makes people tick: how they are affected by early influences in life; how they interrelate; and how they affect one another. Reading and writing poetry is a kind of therapy: an imperative communion that facilitates empathy and understanding between others and my selves. 'Emotion recollected in tranquility.' Wordsworth

 

Poem completed 10th September 2020

 

Despair

 

looms out of the light,

fills the café doorway.

 

It lumbers straight towards me,

so close its breath is foetid.

 

The stench is overpowering;

engulfs the balm of coffee,

 

the facade of normality.

Its mouth stretches - a chasm -

 

and from way down deep

the roar roars out of me.