Mandy Pannett

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Circles

Are they concentric, is that
what they're called, those pools
of slow rain, those circles that widen, rush out
to disperse in puddles or lakes or in
a low pond where trees are as skinny
as cities of pylons stripped
and bare-thin?

Now it's remembrance with nobody left
to talk about trenches, the gas and the choke.
Yet petals still fall on the warrior's tomb -
he, the un-named and less
than a skeleton, lies beneath
poppies and bells.

Coffins of soldiers unwieldy in planes
ache in their flags which droop like fledglings
lost on a different terrain.

Mandy Pannett teaches creative writing and is the author of three poetry collections - 'Bee Purple' and 'Frost Hollow' from Oversteps Books and the recently published 'Allotments in the Orbital' from Searle Publishing. She is currently working on a long sequence of poems in the sonnet form.