Dawn Gorman believes poetry should be everywhere - puts it on beermats, uses it to
work with people with memory loss, facilitates writing workshops, organises poetry
events and runs international poetry competitions. She is widely published, and has
performed in New York, Paris, London - and lots of smaller places in between.

“Poetry isn't a profession, it's a way of life. It's an empty basket;
you put your life into it and make something out of that.” Mary Oliver

Catching the Peach

The pathologist
who was instrumental
in unravelling
the human genome
has sparkling, kind
blue-ocean eyes.
His yacht, though,
is out of the water,
in town, for sale,
the belt of his 1950s
sheepskin-collared coat
twisted.
His smile is a
'swim with me'
movie-star drawl
but drifts
then returns, like
small waves lapping
at something and nothing
on a resting tide.
He tells me about
a long-ago motorbike trip
through England to
Scotland, the islands,
Europe, Italy, a
collision with
a fruit cart,
the bounce of colours
on the road.
Then he asks, again,
where I come from,
and I want
to kiss his cheek,
imprint my words there
so he can check them later,
put this unravelling
on hold,
catch the peach
before it hits the ground,
splits, spills -
something
to be scraped up
and thrown away.

Dawn Gorman
(first published in The Interpreter's House, Issue 57)