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A bow-tie pattern
A bow-tie pattern - Richard Price
A bow-tie pattern
My daughter’s defiance just now
– the momentum of sobbing –
just because it was bedtime.
Lovely Ellen.
I remember my own tears
and a bow-tie pattern,
the tense crossed wires
of bedsprings above me
(I was lying within an inch
of Dad’s angry reach),
and my raw-throated sobs
when the woman I always knew
was wrong for me, finally left –
and I was relieved, and desolate.
from Lucky Day (Carcanet, 2005), © Richard Price 2005, used by permission of the author and the publisher