top of page

"This Umbrella" by Will Staveley



I was talking to a friend of mine.

It was early but we were both late out

And we mouthed at the reflection

In the other's eyes.

And as we hugged and headed back down

She gave me my umbrella.

(Forgotten some night before).


We traced :


zn+1 = zn2 + c

on our ways home

talking through the marvel of telephony

Warding off the highwaymen

of this Babelbound city.


We each in turn reached our houses and

struggled with the keys,

Flung our luggage on the floor

groped our way up on hands and knees.


But before then, the most important part,

Yeah, there was this - this umbrella -

Yeah, and I was walking home,

swinging it in all kinds of orbits,

both hands locked in tighthand fists

mapping how Mandelbrot taught us,

Wave-particle duality between my wrists.

The umbrella canopy leaked

the fourth colour into my eye, which

Since has never opened so wide

To the prospect of some sort of meaning;

I fell in love for the last time -

I was walking back with it in my hands.



Wish I could remember where I got

that umbrella.

I left it somewhere

I shouldn't have.

But still I can see the umbrella spires,

Spinning through my hands.

I was a match glowing in the dark

And I thought for maybe just a second

I was floating a couple feet high;


it was like a renaissance.

My lungs opened up

to the smiles of a kind of symbol,

beckoning me into the sky.




Will Staveley is a poet whose work has been featured in Poetry Quarterly, The Dawntreader, and Poet's Republic amongst other journals. He was also runner-up for the 2021 erbacce poetry prize and is looking for an unlikely home for his book-length imaginary translations of Ezra Pound's Cathay.

Comments


bottom of page