Late crossing - Anne-Marie Fyfe

Last Things

I take your things
in a tagged plastic bag
across the resounding lino -
the car keys and wallet,
your grey tweed jacket,
its smell of tobacco -
and pick up your car
from the empty park,
Don't choke, you'd say,
it should start first time,
your voice in my head
as clear as the ringing
of the evening Angelus

Anne-Marie Fyfe was born in Cushendall on the Antrim coast and the late crossing is the journey back to England where she now lives. Many of the poems here are in memory of her father. She is widely known for organising poetry readings at the Troubadour Coffee House in Kensington, but also for her poetry.

Anne-Marie Fyfe's poems have a lyric clarity, an ontological accuracy and unflinching vigilance that is both spiritual and revelatory.
Tom Paulin