Grey

Distanced through monochrome,
rendered grey-scale, newsprint,

without the pink of nails, palms, lips,
the cat-green and warm brown of eyes,

the mustard-ochre of baby-poo
the blue of a university sweat-shirt

the scarlet spurt from a wound
or rust-red drying menstrual blood.

You are black-and-white
like suffragettes under arrest,

trench warfare, Martin Luther King
and JFK, safely in the time-before,

already dead or old, fixed in a history
which we can’t be expected to change.

Maggie Butt

If you have any thoughts on this poem, Maggie Butt  would be pleased to hear them.