ten poems in septemberÂ
Published by White Craw 2016 This is a freely licensed work, as defined in the Free Art License 1.3, the text of which can be found at http://artlibre.org/licence/lal/en/ This license grants the right to freely copy, distribute, and transform this work without the author's explicit permission. Acknowledgements Front cover illustration: digitally remastered from a photograph of one of a series of collograph prints by Sarah Knox, inspired by plants gathered at Duddingston fields in Holyrood Park. The original image can be found at: http://www.sarahknoxgallery.co.uk/#/duddingstonfields/ Back cover illustration: digitally remastered from a photograph of a working drawing by Douglas Robertson. The original image can be found at: http://www.douglasrobertson.co.uk/wordpress/?p=143
stallashaw moss windmills station the desert as though they have come here of their own accord they crank in a field of silence the knowhow of machines the silent noise of motion over blanched hills and scree scoured clean and tumbling all that wind moving invisibly to see its gathering in the pulsebeat of quiet rotation is to see space flow
medcaut rock licked by salt and luck where the wind blows west and the monks pray east where the lave layer sand and seaweed to leeward sides of dry stane dykes where rain falls on no trees and soaks through years the homemade soil that some grasses may grow for the sheep who stare out to sea solid sea crushed bodies of coral and clams karstland melting back to ocean even the seals when they come ashore and peel and hide their thick black skins long to go back to slip beneath the waves back into their sealgrace
ash keys 1. mother chambered snug in folds of scale and bract pale seed pillowcased and cossetted after the greening after deluge and drought ash keys twirl on a single wing onto moss beds and bracken scruffed and moistened and alone 2. nubbin of nut meat burrowed in humus more pip than pine squirreled in dankness beneath needlespatter spread by wind and winter scrape cascades and waterfalls limb over silver limb dripping just at the rootline 3. branch tips growing like ice crystals splinterspreading featherforming a finger
a limb cilium by cilium nothing but chlorophyll and light through rootclench and ringpain and foment of sap to become windsifter lightshifter wingtip and whistle
sky soft rain and hard light the old yearning to be held the ancient fear of having not enough something gone something else arriving rocks shattered finer than the smallest atoms of human memory air we call breath when we take it in and turn it into movement/anger/song the beating of birdwings the flutter of muscle on muscle the space between raindrops the drum of a rabbit’s heart rivers before and after they are rivers
seahorse ghostlike not hyperreal in a vivarium but in a jar preserved in formaldehyde this one specimen bleached white and is that your front pouch filled with little replicas of yourself hundreds of little horses preserved forever in nonlife deferred to another world little replicas never to emerge as we place it back on the shelf with the many other curiosities
my neglected apple tree buds burst blossoms age into apples the world feeds on light each fruit slackens drops into the bright waste of last year’s unclaimed fruit largesse sewn into topsoil the fallen the wayward unclasp take time to unlearn take back the world that swallows unclaimed offerings and folds them into its dark seams
automne sur la seine argenteuil claude monet 1873 two banks one golden one green the town ahead the needle of a spire puncturing the clouds rumours of industry boats five or more drawn up at the golden side the first russet like a flame on the water the next two blue one a sailboat the other a skiff ochregold spilling from the trees pouring under the hulls staining the river with the same burning intensity as life at its peak its flame threatening to go out in a month the trees will be masts as bare as the boats the pale light hints at winter’s knives
northumbria I saw a sea so dense it seemed to roll the storm from its depths a grey and chalky sea so vehement the land yielded to it I heard the surf in the icy pebbles their broken stone debacle under foaming blades which bespoke chaos I watched the seagulls drift low over the coast their cries sharpened creaks of fright soared in the headwinds I wanted to brave the waves of rain the death metal that erased the sky but I stayed sheltered behind the rocks
that night how small we were floating our bellies bloated in that inkblack sea water clawing at the shoreline father standing stern unbowed we our bellies bloated soon to sink mother quaking with the stars father standing stern unknowing no port to starboard no star to bow mother still eyes towed by hope by the endless repetition the rustle of the waves their shaggy ripples no port to starboard no star to bow and we how small we were floating our bellies bloated through a trembling of waves through their shallow lappings that night in that inkblack sea
stolen children
they step into a band of toadstools and vanish mycelium fairies the children are in the soil mothers call the witches they begin to hunt it is the postmodern everything is fucked up scary children disappear into milky photographs and fade rubber shoe single finger any remnant becomes a fetish saintlike crimescene relics spirited away they say hawthorn roots rowan branch fathers run in circles nine times widdershins aes sídhe the people of the mounds hold each a sonordaughter’s hand and walk them through their empty halls
white craw 2016