Two Poems

By Fig B. - Year 13

Down by the Pond

My father makes me pancakes when I stop sleeping again

And my mother places a neat row of clementines

In a trail outside my bedroom door

Towards the garden

The yawning trees stretch their feathered hands towards me in Earnest solemnity and the acorns, dripping from the faulty taps of bold oak, tap my shoulders

A crested bird fellow wanders beside me and we dance

Late into twilight

We lug the record player

To the tree house and it taps its rooted feet to the whispered soundtrack of this comfortable haze

The spring showers assemble to knock on the door and bring offerings

Of plums and sickly jam

A fox somewhere is carrying a rabbit home on his back to share supper with its cubs

They will drink red wine

And eat braised sweetcorn from the farmer’s patch in the field Next door but one

And we will sneak into their tavern and leave gifts

Of ribbon and fireflies

We peel clementines and butter pancakes

As the next day dawns

And my beating heart is still, and there is a tea party happening

Down by the pond

‘What should such fellows as I do, crawling between earth and heaven?’Hamlet and Ophelia, Act 3, Scene 1, Hamlet

The weight of heaven, bedlam, silence, whatever we want to name it sags heavy above the church

With the weight of hell, rose hip, dragonfly pushing upwards through the roots of distant stone

Some seductive oath rings from the organ, a secret forged in gilded robe and stained glass

Traipsing through this liminal road towards an undisclosed future

We turn back and forth, up and down,

We Are Lost And We Are Found

This is no urgent escape, we must learn the scriptures of the woods beneath us before we may fly

I am anchored to the secrets of above and below by my aching spine

An eagerness to be seen dribbles off of my bones alongside my skin

I melt from the carved pig's head that precedes the last supper

I am in the air now

I become the sickly aroma that haunts the palms of the fallen archangel

We are all crawling through this forgotten trench in time with the beating drum that squats at the earth’s core beating a rhythm for all, that is too fast for the pale, tiresome ones