Bramble

The old brambles here are dull
and dark and scratchy, twisting
and curving down
to find new ground. A home
for rabbits: we watch them
darting in to safety
at the sound
of our boots on the soil –
vibration sends them
back behind those spiked
defences.

Soon there’ll be
fresh shoots, and pink-tinged
leaves. Back home, we battle
them, come in scratched
and bloodied, wanting tea.
Here’s different. Cattle
will come in and chew
them back – but not these
sprawling cages, old and hard –
safe haven for the small,
soft creatures of the world.

It’s National Weed Appreciation Day (I know!) and obviously we are celebrating at dVerse. Come and join us! The bar opens at 8pm BST, 3pm EDT. I’m so confused about what time it is right now!

Advertisement

My book!

I am so excited to share this with you! Isn’t it gorgeous? I’ve been so lucky to work with Annick Yerem of Sidhe Press on this. Coming out around Beltane.

Ash

I didn’t think I’d miss them –
scruffy trees, feathery leaved,
sprouting up anywhere, everywhere –

but here we are. The bony wrists
poking out of tattered greenery,
bare branches knobbled:

old women, I think.

I’d hardly noticed them.
How many ash trees soften
the skyline? How many?

I see them now. The nakedness,
the cold dying, stripped
of leaf, of robe, of dignity.

How blind I was. How stupid.

A poem for Sherry at earthweal. She wants us to consider a lonely world. So many trees are dying around us. Horse chestnuts have some kind of virus, ash trees – which define my local lancscape. Even the forestry spruces are being cut down. It’s hard not to notice and wonder what has gone wrong.

Photo by Neil Harrington Photography on Pexels.com

Genetics

My father’s eyes
came from his mother –
not handed down,
father to son. My brother’s
eyes are blue, and mine are, too.
My father’s eyes are brown.

My daddy’s hands
came from his mother.
He passed them on to us –
big knuckles, broad
working hands.

My dad can’t sing,
but he’s a raconteur –
my brother, too –
but I can’t tell a joke.
Nor can my mum.

That’s how things go.

For Punam at dVerse. A poem with four fathery song titles incorporated. Can you spot them?

My father’s eyes: Eric Clapton

Father to son: Queen

Daddy’s hands: Holly Dunn

Estuary

Sea has shifted the sand again.
Again, we’re strangers here –
here, where land meets sea,
sea carves and heaps, shapes,
shapes that curve and billow,
billow like waves themselves,
themselves sand. Here it’s new,
new as far as the edge of the sea.

a quadrille for Mish at dVerse, shift is our key word.

Cliff-dweller

Some days I can set myself adrift in space. In time.

I sit, thousands of feet above the sea, watching. I remember wooden triremes, manned by heroes, and fishing smacks. Now there are great ships weighed down by cargo – and white sailboats, and emptiness.

I always loved this thyme-scented, sun-baked place, because of the ocean.  When the gods left, I came here for shelter. My sisters hid elsewhere – I used to hear their voices, but now I think I am alone.

Some days, I can raise a hand and see the waves through my skin. Some days I’m solid as the rock I sit on. Some days I hear music. Some days, nothing but my own heart beating. Some days I drift through memories.

I’m too ancient to feel sorrow. The sun on my skin is enough, and the sound of the sea.

Prosery for Merril at dVerse. Our quotation is “In space in time I sit thousands of feet above the sea”, from May Sarton, “Meditation in Sunlight”

Body. Guard.

Body.
All I can think of is paper.
So easy to tear, to cut, to burn,
and they way it holds everything:
joy and death and tax
and fairytales.

Guard.
2 a.m., and it won’t get darker,
and all I can do is stand vigil,
while shadows become monsters
and monsters become shadows,
and all the night noises
are breath, and footsteps,
and the weight of it. The weight.

Bodyguard.
Not the big guy
in the suit, or the woman
with the gun. None of them.
It’s only love that matters,
that takes the bullet,
that bears the pain,
that steps up and holds you.
Only love.

For Laura’s prompt at dVerse.

Spring

Each blossom opening
is a gasp. Oh, world –
so blue, so bright –

and each bird is a dance,
or a step in a dance.

Can you feel it? The
thrum thrum thrum,
the throbbing rhythm
deep in the heart

that demands to be sung.

A quadrille for De at dVerse. Sanaa is hosting and our word is “gasp”.