Audrey McIlvain

Scarborough, England

Biography: Audrey McIlvain is a relative newcomer to the world of poetry after a hectic career in education, teacher training, music teaching, publishing, and consultancy work for various universities and the British Council, both in the U.K. and overseas (Spain, Mexico, South Africa, Slovenia, Chile).

She has always enjoyed poetry and gained a Masters Degree with Manchester Metropolitan University in 2018.

She has published many educational articles, seven books for children, a self-help book for the elderly, and a first collection of poetry. She also won the category she entered in the national W.W.1 poetry competition, Whispers of War, in 2015.

Her interests include singing, playing the piano and guitar, and art.

Poem completed on 19th May 2020.

Ephemerality   

Cherry blossoms fall with delicate pirouettes

to join those already lying motionless

on the fresh, green lawn. Necklaced in pink,

red pistils no longer entice bees to suck

them dry. I lose count, as day after day

they cascade, unable to call out for help –

no hope of rescue, or return to sakura trees

dancing ballet in the sky. But, who cares?

Will we bemoan the bedraggled heaps

of perished brown they leave behind?

Will we tally them, add their number

to our swelling data-bases of deaths?

Then philosophise without emotion,

“After all, they had their time in bloom …”