hanging basket

Alcoholics are sometimes described as "old soaks" - and the metaphor of water filling, overflowing, leaking, is explore here - referring to a hanging basket, outside where else bit a pub.

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hanging basket

 

water drains through the soil

of the hanging basket outside the pub

though it does not know to drain

but when it balloons to a drop

ready to fall

and I look to it, my face is held there

convex, bended, imaginably more ugly than before

caught in a moment

before the weight gets too great and gravity takes over

the apple does not fall far, I ponder

my father too was an alcoholic

who used to watch the water drip

from a hanging basket

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Author's Note

First appeared in Trevor Maynard's collection Keep On Keepin' On in 2012, the poem is a rich metaphor exploring not only alcoholism, but loss, and resignation - the poem is not autobiographical, but influenced by the life of a good friend who sadly passed in 2010.