Synkroniciti is honored to welcome back writer Pan Piper from Scotland with “lament at the end of Lego,” a poignant poem about the fear of growing up and growing older. It’s a remembrance of a child’s apprehension which pivots into a lament for a marriage no longer viable and a family permanently altered. It is not the child who grew up into something unexpected. Pan’s poetry is delicate and devastating at the same time and intensely vulnerable. I call this variety of poetry a “poem with a knife in its pocket,” a piece that begins sweetly and ordinarily and then stabs you in the heart with a depth of emotion in its final moment. It’s a mark of true artistry to carry it off without revealing too much too soon.
Read “lament at the end of Lego in Synkroniciti’s “Family” issue, available here: https://synkroniciti.com/the-magazine/purchase-individual-issues/.
Pan Piper is a freelance hermit on the uttermost edge of post-industrial Scotland. In the 1960s she achieved Double Commended for an essay ‘The Seven Deadly Sins,’ and a Distinction in Grade 3 Trumpet. Her mantra is ‘just like this’ and one of her favourite words is ‘dwell.’ She has shape-shifted to Echidna, and is training to be a dakini when she grows up.