New Year’s Eve – 2024
Gusting the old year out
The fire draws well this night. The room dim-lit
by candles carefully holding quietened
time. Outside, the wind spills its guts – against
the house, windows tight-drawn shut. Gather up
all that’s left discarded, ready to banish
the obsolete. Place it all to one side.
This wind is famished. Soon, it will eat well.
For now, as the old year departs – a spell,
a little something to not let it hide.
It’s outstayed its welcome. Let it vanish
to thinning air. Tea swirls inside a cup
as you libate the future year. Remains
are given to the flame. All things must end.
The chimney swallows. Fire begins to spit.
2024
From Wild Boar, to be published late 2025, with V.Press
The Winterkeeper (a Solstice sestina)
2013
Earth Hour:
This hour is fat, yet still it hangs by a knife
blade. We’re not ready to brave the cut
instead we admire the plumpness, run
a nail across the surface. Its scent fills
our skins. We hesitate. Do we feast
on the flesh, allow our tongues the juice?
Or shall we let it drop, explode to the floor,
and watch it splatter? Will we let it seep
through our wounds; congeal our blood until
we solidify? Or, instead do we do nothing but
admire its form, unsure of ourselves?
Do nothing, but wait while its wholeness
withers as it shrinks to its own skin,
and another hour approaches despite us.
2012
This poem was written as part of a collaboration with the Worcestershire Poetry stanza, inspired by the buildings at Avoncroft Museum, nr. Bromsgrove, Worcestershire.
The poems written from this collaboration are part of a poetry trail which runs at Avoncroft until January 2013.
The Merchant’s House
My Master’s house holds colour.
Within winter’s flaxen skies,
the sun hidden, he bids me
touch those sudden bolts of red,
subdued at first, then spilt.
At night the Sleep of Plants
protect their budded young.
There are many faces to green
though each is weak in light.
Ripened men take buckthorn
shade anointed flesh. Lush.
And the sap damp to the ears.
Washed and washed again,
Walwort’s stolen blue fabric
seethed in water, left out to dry.
My firmament unstitched.
I watch for the seam of light
beneath wood. My Master comes
with my sky-skinned elder-black,
starred where the dye’s uncaught.
Four poems from Polesworth:
These poems were inspired by my time as a Workshop Leader as part of Poleworth’s Dig the Poetry sessions. In particular I was looking as using the senses, other than sight to convey asense of the place.
Anker
As you sleep
under night’s habit
of holding secrets,
and the hiss of stars
bleeds dew tears
from the lawn, I move
before awakening light
as answered as a prayer.
This is how it is from now:
Morning brings its own skin.
fastens itself against the touch of soil.
The day yawns, stretches,
fingertips touch
parsley, sage, rosemary, passing thyme
by the mouth of the day.
The sun rests its head
on the curve of the Abbey.
Breathe
Light distils through glass
colours break, scatter
like forgotten
thoughts.
Inside my world stills,
cups my soul.
My skin
gleams with a knowledge
still unshared.
Foothold
The silence holds each step,
lets it speak, while my tongue
knows its place.
Each day here knows
its own stillness,
and its strength.
Ours is to trust
and to trust again.
Our paths lengthen.
Each footstep unique
as our own conformities.
The floor absorbs us.
From Petrolhead:
The Forest Seamstress
My mother is making my clothes.
I hide behind a screen and trade my shoes for leaf and bark.
I tread more softly.
Brrrch, Brrrch. She feeds her material through blood and branch.
Brrrch. The birds stop to listen. I hear the rustle of skin.
A pool of leaves breathes at her feet.
Mother climbs from bark to twig. She lifts hair from my face,
lets me see. She tells me to climb. She wants the stars. I shake my head.
My mouth is packed with velvet-warm earth.
My mother laughs and rubs my skin with fresh-spun sap. I am her daughter.
She tugs my gut. I climb to please her. My intestines wind through bark and bough.
She rips satin ribbons from remnant skies and lines hidden pools; eye deep
and as watchful. I sense my soul take root.
Some days her belly growls, I run for shelter. She shakes the ground.
The sky fills with swallows’ purple light. I hide to find my way back in.
I emerge to fallen leaves. She smells of age and earth. When she dies
I become her. By winter I dress in icy armour. It keeps my heart soft.
Market Day
Cold February banks before dawn and litters the ground with snow-eyed splinters. The stalls are in place. The egg lady has stopped selling – she tells me she’s too old for this, hands tremor as she passes me her final box.
My skin grumbles, I take the change. The air is bitter and tastes of blood. I was here last month. I come here every month.
They know me now, by face but not by name. They sell me their honey, cheese and local-brewed beer.
Would they run, I wonder, if I ever paused and spoke out loud?
I scan the sky. The weather turns inside.
Wind
At night it demands to be let in –
a starving dog, its voice harsh
against your window.
You Ignore the whining and the wind turns
tail and storms through the wood
marking scent.
Later it returns contrite from broken trees
and butts against the glass.
You sneak the window open, and you’re done for,
until morning, when day relents and you wake,
exhausted.
Fruit
You fed me. Firm lychees peeled
from goose-bumped flesh of sunset pink.
Figs divide and flower – four quarters, one whole.
Strawberry hearts bleed a head of seeds.
You split a peach. The soft kernel exposed.
On the table, the flushed cheeks of apples.
A pear hangs like a tear from the bowl –
its stem stronger than expected.
(Previously published in Poetry on a Plate, the Poetry Society, 2004 and on Daisy Goodwin’s website in 2003.)