Minor trumpet blowing…

A couple of months ago I entered a poetry competition, and the results are just out.

There were a total of 1,305 entries – and I was ‘long listed’! I didn’t make it to the short- or prize-list – and to be honest, I didn’t expect to – but I’m pleased to have made it to the long list in a very large field of entries. Well over a thousand people didn’t..!

Here’s what I offered up (it was inspired by the image attached to this post):

Camouflage

I looked for you in all the usual places

yet even in my memory I failed to find you

as if you had deleted yourself from my history.

I knew you were there, somewhere;

pursuing another dream;

revelling in isolation.

 

“Anonymous is not invisible” you once said

as I struggled with your life,

your way of not living.

And taking you at your word

I look for you on street corners, in coffee shops;

I glimpse a hint of your smile in others’ faces.

I look over my shoulder,

unable to dispel the sense that your new project

is simply you watching me.

 

I have never wanted to be absent, to disappear;

I have always felt that proof of life

is to make a mark on it, however small.

Yet here you are – or here you aren’t –

making your own kind of mark

in your own intangible way,

invisible but not anonymous.