Issue > Poetry
Christopher Hopkins

Christopher Hopkins

Christopher Hopkins is a Welsh poet who resides in Canterbury (UK). He was nominated for an IPPY and the Pushcart Prize in 2017. His chapbook The Last Time We Saw Strangers is due out in June 2018. He has been widely published, including The Morning Star, Tilde, Riggwelter Press, Indianapolis Review, Ink Sweat & Tears and The Blue Nib Magazine.

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When the light comes             with a winter's morning
when even the evergreens hold their breath
and the sugar kicks wait          while the children are sleeping
   
that light
           pouring in

the stop motion thaw        lowering the shadows back to the earth

into the kingdoms of the dormant borders

the line    mass and colour 
anchored     to the earth's bare lead.

Unhiding sweet wrappers
lay unsettling to the eye                                    

as a calf carcass of a lightning strike's dead.
Stripped          bleached

between the rods of the iron roses

as a dying fresco                of an old season's dare.

A flattened coke can wreath,
laid at the foot       of the oak bough

in an act of remembrance         to the young summer bodies
fallen
on the cool pear lawns.

Tarmac rivers along the side
confuse the swans every now and then

and the only way the memorial stone will move anymore
is when the mammoths return.

And there, on the park bench uprights              nailed brass plaques
flicker to life the dead names of the loved 
who found escape in this view

who sat and watched over their healing turf.
Or maybe it was the sun-bathing limbs of June.

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