Shortlist Saturdays: Erasure Poem by Lawrence Moore

Erasure Poem

I’m here now and I know you’ve been waiting so long

that the leaves have fallen, the lawnmowers turned to rust,

but an iceberg need not care where it’s broken from;

bewitched by life’s drip, drip, drip, all shade mistrust.

We are standing beneath the weeping willow’s sway,

watching children sprinkle grain for their ducks and geese.

This enchanting present, no darkening clouds outweigh.

Due storm refrains for another time round at least.

Let’s savour next circle as much as we would the last,

say ‘Hi’ to Bird Island sentries, then suppose

that some inconspicuous wormhole along the path

has transported us where shared history, no one knows,

so with limbs barely used, but aching, you and I,

under strangely familiar weeping willow, stand

to be caught in each other’s eyes one more first time

as we walk to the ice cream shop by the blue playsand.

Lawrence Moore was something of a dilettante until he reached the age of forty. Since nestling upon poetry’s bough, his work has appeared in a number of publications including Darkwinter Literary Magazine, Fahmidan Journal and The Madrigal. He has a new full-length poetry collection, This Joyful Interlude, published by Jane’s Studio Press in November 2025.