HELEN PLETTS is an award-winning UK-based poet and English co-translator of Ma Yongbo. Her work appears in International Times, Vox Populi, Ink Sweat and Tears, Open Shutter Press, Aesthetica, Orbis, and The Fenland Reed. Many of her poems have been illustrated by Graphic Artist Romit Berger.
LOVE LETTER TO A STILL BLUE SHIRT
To my best friend Yongbo
that hasn’t caught the breeze yet, that is not fluttering,
though in the sleeves there is separate movement;
sleeves hanging like the double pendulum of a steady clock.
Long, thin arms will fill them
Stretch them around you and lean on to their elbows,
Extending thin fingers into a pen.
The colour is as unobtrusive as morning mist
rising over the back of the city fox,
that must still be there,
first crossing my path at midnight,
as persistent as nature is in cities,
it’s gentle feet on the same pavement.
And somewhere a boy is constructing his future
from blue woven thread, nevertheless; stretching his arms.
