photography

An Evening with Jonathan Steffen

On Thursday, 4 December 2014 Jonathan will be reading some of his poems at Heffers Bookshop, 20 Trinity St, City Centre, Cambridge CB2 1TY

Never quite empty and never quite full,
The motel car park ebbs and flows
With vehicles that suddenly all look the same.

Thus should love start, thus should love start:
A slow chill creeping on the heart

The moments when we meet
Alight like a bird on my hand

Do not love me too much, do not love me too much,
For there’s trust in my eye but there’s flight in my touch

Amazingly, the thing I want to write about
Is the colour of the coat you wore that winter.

We were inveterate readers, you and I –
The Penguin Modern Classics generation:
We took our values from that pale grey spine

How shall I hold you, gone from me soon?
I shall hold you to me as the cloud holds the moon.

I drive. You count the miles and navigate.
Choosing a crooked route, we alternate
Between the mountain passes and the plains

There is a mix of the modern and the traditional: it’s a colourful and well-produced coffee-table book with a twist.