Poetry Month is Still In Bloom

Flowers left at the Hampton Court gates on the morning after Queen Elizabeth died. Photo by Diana Dinverno.

Diana Dinverno’s haibun was one of three winning poems in 3rd Wednesday’s 2024 annual poetry contest. Contest judge, Ronnie Hess said “The Day After the Death of Queen Elizabeth is a deft and moving haibun that combines family and English history. I was swept along by the two pasts, the two chronologies, which are told in luminous and fine detail. Like the poet, rendezvousing with an 87-year old cousin she’s never met, I wanted this meeting, this reading 'to stretch into years.' We are in 'lush countryside,' indeed.”

The poem was published April 5, 2024 at thirdwednesdaymagazine.org.

Day After the Death of Queen Elizabeth II

I am meeting my 87-year-old first cousin, Frances, for the first time at Hampton Court's empty

train station, its platform, open-air. After a long embrace, we study one another for features

found in sepia-toned photographs of the long-vanished.

Cross a bridge that spans

the Thames, approach castle walls,

peer into the past.

Frances' mother, as a young woman, a girl, fled her mother's grave, her father's expectation

she'd raise her siblings, still downy, full of noise and need. She escaped to London, built a quiet

life, never revealed her past. When she died, her fortress omissions, deceptions collapsed.

Hampton Court's gilded

gates, closed. Steady morning rain.

Still, the flowers come.

In nearby Richmond, Frances points to her childhood home, a wisteria-covered façade near

the remains of Richmond Palace, once home to Elizabeth I, destroyed in 1649 by Oliver Cromwell,

that hero or villain who melted crowns, tried to blot out a bloodline, create a clean slate.

Butterfly bush plumes

sprout from every crevice, crack,

they nod, unrestrained.

A dog greets us at a pub's entrance. In the small garden, the sky blossoms, painterly blue.

There's tea and talk of the long-ago choices that still sting. I rest my hand

on my cousin's forearm, wrist. I want this afternoon to stretch into years.

The gentle, golden-

eyed lab leans against my legs,

rolls onto her back.

At Richmond Terrace, Frances points to a plaque describing the lush countryside, its important

chronology authored by her mother, my enigmatic aunt, the town historian. Standing

side-by-side, high above the Thames, our shared moments move like a river reshaping the land.

We watch cygnets glide,

meadowlands unfurl into

a Turner landscape.