Elizabeth Brewster

 

For Patricia Kathleen

I would have liked to write you a poem
simple and beautiful as the ones your mother
used to read to you, or sometimes recite
over the breakfast table: 
“Rose Aylmer” or one of the Lucy poems.

Back when I first knew you,
when we were both young,
I might have managed quatrains, ballad meter.
I might have managed simple beauty.

After seventy years or so,
give or take a few days,
there are too many memories
to pack into tidy quatrains.

You had acquired more identities,
and so perhaps had I,
after all these years,
though I like to think
some essential self remained
for each of us,
something young and striving
toward light.

P. K. Page

November 23rd, 1916—
January 14th, 2010

P. K. Page with Leonora Carrington and Leonora's grandson.

This is a photograph of P. K. and Leonora Carrington (with her grandson) at an exhibition of Leonora's work in 1998. Photo courtesy of Rosemary Sullivan.