This weeks Window Poem

As part of our new Poem of the Week segment (ok, it might not be every week, but you have to have title don’t you!), we present the poem in the window of the community run Castle Bookshop. With thanks to Harula Ladd.

Clive Donovan is the author of two poetry collections, The Taste of Glass [Cinnamon Press 2021] and Wound Up With Love [Lapwing 2022] and is published in a wide variety of magazines including Acumen, Agenda, Crannog, Popshot, Prole and Stand. He lives in Totnes, Devon, UK. He was a Pushcart and Forward Prize nominee for 2022’s best individual poems.

Constellations
by Clive Donovan

The world turns somehow
but when the clouds clear,
night’s sky is different:

Gone are the bears,
major and minor,
the scorpion, crab and all that crowd

of bull, ram, goat, no more;
the water carrier, dubious scales
and the alleged twins.

Even doughty Orion,
with easy to spot belt
and snapping dog at heel,

is gone. A new configuraton
of constellations
is apparent up there: I see

a weeping unicorn in flight
and a dove feeds upon spare stars
and two hands clasp in a handshake

in the dark; a whip, a stick,
a fractured heart.
Everything and nothing is changed.