Two Countries
This is the oak tree that should not be here.
It stretched its blind shoot from the ungrazed fell last year.
In the spring of no lambs, it fixed its grip on Bradley’s,
Snaking pale roots through the soil, a volunteer
To fortune on the bare hill. When it grows tall
And crazed with age, the hiker on the Wall
Above the farm will pass, oblivious
As now to what it means – this doubtful peace,
This border drawn between two warring countries.
(Published in
Laurna Robertson
Rising
When the fire is slow to kindle,
matches snap off their blue heads,
flames retreat from the crumpled crossword,
sugar spangles dwindle
and paper, taut across the chimney,
fails to draw the faintest flicker
or trickle of smoke
then I become
The Old Woman
Who Must Climb The Sky
With The Sun Strapped To Her Back.
(Published in Milne Graden Poems, Selkirk Lapwing Press, January 2008)
Vivien Jones
Something in the Blood
(after ‘Great Silkie’, 2005)
I know he has been nowhere
but inside my body, this babe
who lies in sea anemone motion,
expressing the oceans
of his heredity.
My meek sea empathy
has been to paddle and swim some,
once in deep rough water
with salt smacks in my face,
close to surrender.
So it must be that sea genes
swam from my blood to his,
changing cells that were me
to not me, building a stranger
inside his skin.
We stare into the pool,
at refractions, reflections.
The image seems clear
but underneath, his otherness
stirs small fears.
(Published in Something in the Blood, Selkirk Lapowing Press, January 2008)
Triptych
Sunlight on water,
sighing, singing, shimmering,
shining like diamonds.
Tempest on water,
tossing turbulence of waves,
tumult and motion.
Moonlight on water,
silky pathway to the shore,
satin smooth and calm.
(Published in For the Hills I Sing, Selkirk Lapwing Press, January 2008)
Sally E. Dalglish
Time
Illustration of time:
eternal rock.
Relics of past lives:
limpet shells
and temporality:
three stages of a dandelion:
echoes of the sun:
one o’clock ph! ...
two o’clock ph! ...
three o’clock ph! ...
(Published in Exhibition of My Uncle's Parts, Selkirk Lapwing Press, September 2007)
Andy Hopkins
[a translation from silence]
you me same same
hand : hand
eye : eye
mouth : mouth
Mirrored,
or photocopied and folded
by the sun, two together.
Neither original or copy,
eyes watching eyes watching eyes
with open fun smiles.
But now we’re not the same:
we are simulacra,
each of us a parallel line on the page of the bed
and when we speak
we speak in opposite directions.
No same same,
same difference.
(Published in Dark Horse Pictures, Selkirk Lapwing Press, September 2007)
Ayelet McKenzie
Laura
She sleeps to escape the pain,
which grows, a briar within,
suffocating hopes like flowers,
that flutter beneath her skin.
Many a prince has desired her,
would climb up those braids to her lips.
She stands alone in darkness,
a maiden eclipsed.
(Published in
Life and Porridge
Slowly,
like the drip of a loose tap
I’ve got accustomed
to the sounds.
The wheezing pipes,
the faint flush
of next door’s toilet,
the bloke downstairs
telling his wife
to fuck off.
The microwave
ticking down the seconds
heats my porridge,
counts down the seconds
of my life
0-60
and I’m sixty seconds older.
And although the pipes repeat
their wheezing.
and the man downstairs
keeps telling his wife
to fuck off even though she’s left,
all our lives
are silently being
used up.
(Published in Life and Porridge, Selkirk Lapwing Press, September 2006.)
Art, Medicine, Life, Death, Work and the Whole Ball of Wax:
For a Doctor on Retirement
Not long after my brother died
I saw, then tore from a Sunday paper, this:
‘Ognuno esta solo sul cuor della terra
traffito da un raggio di sole:
ed e subito sera.’
It was written by a Sicilian and translated thus:
‘Each of us is alone on the heart of the earth,
pierced by a ray of sun;
and suddenly it’s evening.’
A doctor retiring. Some joke.
Might as well ask a writer to quit
or a painter to donate his brushes
to the bin man. Society’s shaped
by our inescapable nature – red
in tooth and claw, shot through
with quirky mercy – and life
is no more than the breath
it takes to breathe it
in, to hold it, then
breathe out again.
(Published in Art, Medicine, Life, Death, Work and the Whole Ball of Wax, Selkirk Lapwing Press, September 2006.)
New York: Arrival
I’ve arrived
Touched down but still flying
In the city that never sleeps, that is never still.
I’ve arrived
Landed but still coming down
Over junior league size baseball pitches
Multicoloured doll houses all in a row
Each with their own American backyard.
I’ve arrived
New York cabbie style,
That is, crazy, stop for no man
Or car, style.
‘Where you heading?’ the chewing
Mouth asks in the mirror.
‘Mid Manhattan, East 51st Street,’
I say as nonchalant
As I can muster as we swerve into the freeway
To a chorus of horns.
I’ve arrived,
Shaken and stirred,
Blood coursing through my veins,
Skin tingling,
I’ve arrived.
(Published in The Future Is Behind You, Selkirk Lapwing Press, 2006. ISBN: 0953121291).
Forgetting
Not a sound in the wood as I drop
Down the hill.
Just the pulse of my tread measuring
The nameless summer afternoon.
I move through scented silence
Where the landscape hangs, timeless,
Like a faded photograph.
And my brain loosens its chains,
And thoughts drift, softly
Through the soggy air, dropping
Like falling leaves,
Here or there
Or nowhere.
(Published in Dream Down Blue, Selkirk Lapwing Press, 2006. ISBN: 9780953121205).
Old Man Kangaroo
They are serving medallions of kangaroo in Glasgow.
'Darker than steak, velvety and luscious,
tenderloins of small, young kangaroo
are high in iron, low in fat.'
Back in Scotland now, I left an eye in Australia,
coveting 110 Kangaroo Ground Road, Wattle Glen,
a bungalow and four acres of grazing, ringed by bell birds
(the sound of a spoon on a half-empty milk bottle).
Kookaburras heckle daybreak.
Eucalyptus are forty shades of green,
grey, blue silver. Leaves like coins.
Old man kangaroo, the rightful owner, coughs.
Sitting on his tail like a three-legged stool,
he is taller than the barbecue.
(Published in Sob Sister, Selkirk Lapwing Press, 2005. ISBN: 0953121259).
Hometown
(for Michael Graham)
From that street we went
to everywhere,
you, kitty-corner in your 'Peace Time' house,
me in a 'War Time' one.
We met a half-century later,
thousands of miles away, by chance.
Testing one another on nicknames,
bullies and Ukrainian cooking,
remembering shiny dimes
flattened on Canadian Pacific rails.
Where else (but everywhere)
could we go, besides the meat-packing plant,
the Grain Exchange or City Hall?
Our Neil Young took his guitar to Buffalo Springfield
while we took to poems, archaeology and
the Cree Indian Nation.
Now we listen to the sea pounding us
back to there. I show you
photos of a treeless place
where blond boys dreamed to run,
beyond where lonely freight trains
howled to go,
and went.
(Published in Redwing Summer, Selkirk Lapwing Press, 2005. ISBN: 0953121275) .
Worst
Worst is the fear of seeming odd
For their glory is conformity.
Worse still, the fear of being caught
Out beyond normality.
And what if I went? Would their sky light
Momentarily with fireworks? Would they cry
"We are past masters of regret, come back,
We love you, want you for ourselves."
But I've heard it already. I cry
To those whose guilt shies away
From newer, alien truths - ride on, away
From those still living in their world of clay.
(Published in Pearl, Selkirk Lapwing Press, 2005. ISBN: 0953121267).
Namaste
We stand,
A little shy
Under unaccustomed rucksacks,
Hats, a sky
Tentatively blue.
We eye
Our porters
Shyly, tentatively.
They smile
Beguilingly at us,
Then look quick away
And kick their boots
On the gravel ground.
Their route:
Our way.
Our guide gives the word.
We begin to walk
And our joints, muscles,
Smiles
Loosen up.
(Published in Journey Flags, Selkirk Lapwing Press, 2005. ISBN: 0953121242).
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