Judith Taylor

MEMO TO SELF AND OTHER

Blink and you’ll miss it:
that was us.

The small bird, that looked in for a moment
at the gap in the wall
then flew again.

The black glimpse
on the water near the shore
that could have been
seal, porpoise, otter, only
you wrote it off a shadow
until you saw the sheen of its back

rolling down
away.
And that was us.

That flash of blue in the socket
as you were switching something off at the wall.
You didn’t pause:

finished up, like you hadn’t even seen
that light, that unmistakable moment
that told you there was danger.

Judith Taylor lives in Aberdeen, where she co-organises the monthly Poetry at Books and Beans events. Her second collection, Across Your Careful Garden, was published in 2023 by Red Squirrel Press. Website: http://sometimesjudy.co.uk/

Judith wrote this about her poem:

This poem started with a literal spark, when someone's cheap dodgy old toaster bit the dust one morning and I was barely awake enough to see the warnings. From there I followed a train of associations, as I often do when writing, back to other things I might have missed or nearly missed, and from them to the brief / missed attraction that I framed them within - slightly fictionalised, as these things become in memory, whether you write about them or not.