Wendy Klein

Haywards Heath, West Sussex, UK

Widely published and the winner of many prizes, Wendy Klein is a retired psychotherapist.  Born in New York, she left the US permanently in 1964 and has lived most of her adult life in the UK.  She has three collections: two from Cinnamon Press (Cuba in the Blood), one from Oversteps Books, ‘Anything in Turquoise’), a Selected (2019), ‘Out of the Blue’, from the High Window Press, and a pamphlet, ‘Let Battle Commence’ (2020), based on the letters home of her great grandfather, an officer in the Confederate army in the US Civil War.

Poem written 8 May 2020

Strutting through

Mask of crimson crepe, viridian-

collared, brash in your masculinity,

your desirability, you strut

our lockdown field, poking your head up

again and again above the waves of unmown grass,

siting your hens, two drab devoted girls

who drift in your wake --eager, sycophantic.

You don’t know anything is wrong out here.

No news of a plague disturbs your arrogance.

What you don’t know, can’t hurt you --

your field-world, large and small at once --

is too full of big bird bounty.

O uncommon pheasant, has no one told you

that in the very sky that shelters you,

black holes are devouring stars?