Daily Poem

Accident By EA Markham It is no accident this accident a lost wife in the lift day after day - the smile today straying some way past recognition.

Tomorrow, preened I shall make amends. Tomorrow will our fray commence. What if the happy run of accidents proves tomorrow an accident?

I shall curse the memory; and when the memory starts to please - I shall be old.

EA Markham is a senior lecturer in creative writing at Sheffield Hallam University, and has written plays, stories and poems. His collections of poetry include Living in disguise (1986) and Towards the End of a Century (1989), by Anvil Press, and Letter From Ulster & The Hugo Poems (1993, Littlewood Arc). He edited Hinterland - the Bloodaxe book of Caribbean poetry, in 1989 and he has just finished editing The Penguin Book of Caribbean Short Stories, to be published this autumn.

This poem is from his collection Human Rites, and his new collection, Misapprehensions, will be published in the autumn, both by Anvil.