Honshū bees

£6.00

Honshū bees by Dorothy Yamamoto is a Templar Portfolio Award winning pamphlet launched at Keats House on 26th April 2018

Lighthouse

Although it’s late, we haven’t drawn the curtains
so our pale blue TV screen
is parked on the beach,
tip-balanced with the angles
of chairs and your sofa

and when I ask you
(brushing your hand)
Do you want a coffee?
the green and purple tiles behind the cooker
also migrate
as I do too,
lifting the jar from its cupboard
among the darkened rockpools.

Across the bay a wavery star
which could be water
jiggled in a glass, or a wayward bulb
puzzles my short sight: I push my specs
higher up—it becomes the lighthouse.

If there’s a moon
you might go out and photograph it,
rising above Strawberry Hill.
Either way, it’s not important:
there will be light
and our small patterns upon the world,
all night long, while we sleep.

From Honshu Bees by Dorothy Yamamoto

 ISBN 9781911132387

Dorothy Yamamoto grew up in Barnet, north London, where her Japanese father and English mother settled after the war. That divided background is the source of many of her poems. She now lives in Oxford, and writes non-fiction books about animals as well as poetry. Her collection Landscape with a Hundred Bridges (Blinking Eye Publishing) came out in 2007. Since then she has edited an anthology of poems, Hands & Wings (White Rat Press), in aid of the charity Freedom from Torture.

More from this collection