Visa – a poem by Claire Dyer

That last day of the Festival
it rained –
huge, hot, summer rain;
it fell like songs.
And she’d left her papers
in London, so he drove her there,
shouting mostly.
This is not pretty, she said.

Her flight was at ten,
so they stopped
in a lay-by outside Heathrow.
Headlights strafed them
in the warm dusk,
and they cried a little;
believed, you see,
she might never

return. The last he saw,
she was at the gate.
She waved.
She hasn’t come back,
not yet.

 

—

Claire Dyer writes poetry and women’s fiction and works part-time for 
an HR research forum in London. She is widely published and, as a 
Brickwork Poet, performs conversations in poetry on set themes at 
venues around the UK. She recently completed an MA in Victorian 
Literature & Culture at The University of Reading.

You can read more about her work here