by Jeremy Keighley

A Finnish girl with Turquoise eyes

is the only journal entry

I can remember from leaving England

all those years ago.

Brown, muddy river

oil flats, fields

drift away from us now.

The boat

takes me downstream,

goodbye England

beery toasts and photos,

graffiti docks where cranes

lurk like giant spiders

 

A journey starts

but this time it’s only the end of a visit,

not a new begin.

Now I wish I had written more

when I left England for good

for that slow drift

into the unknown

with no job or flat

waiting for me

I carried only

a single rucksack,

a wad of 10 pound notes

a lot of hope

and a diary full of turquoise eyes.

Jeremy Keighley was born and bred in Derbyshire, England and studied Comparative literature at the University of Essex. He moved to Vienna and then Amsterdam and has spent half his life living abroad. He now lives in Alkmaar, NL and works (non-poetically) in Amsterdam. Jeremy is a performing poet and has released 3 CDs with music by 3-Bop (Monkey Puzzle, Ophelia and Sandstorm). In his spare time he is also a long-distance runner, but has yet to find a way to combine this with writing poetry. He is married and has 4 children. He has poems published in various magazines including : Subdream Vienna, Lunar Poetry (London), Alkmaar Anders (Alkmaar NL), Fuselit Magazine (London) and Birdbook 2. Jeremy has one completed, but unpublished novel and is currently working on his second.

Photo credit: Cindy Snider Re