Lazy-beds

Pat Murgatroyd

Caution

All weekend you want to lift
The phone and call. You didn't
Rising early you went for a ride,
Picturing her still sleeping,
A Sunday sleep, deeply.
A casual call, about that oratorio.
At coffee time might have
Been made. It wasn't.
Arranging the first daffodils
in a cobalt blue jug
You thought of her in the garden,
Dirt beneath each pearly nail,
Clearing a pathway to summer.
At lunch with friends you wondered
If she'd have an afternoon stroll.
As darkness fell the book you read
Beside the fire you'd lit
Was exactly what you knew
She'd like to read. You might
Mention it next time you meet.

Pat Murgatroyd

Sailing Under False Colours

I bear away under a flag no one knows
radiance no one has ever seen.
My boat luffs up under a phosphorescent sky.
Hot to the touch wavelengths break
irridescent to leeward in lambent light
mainsail billows something like pink
something like purple.
The sun rises in lime green.

I'm an infra-red sailor on an x-rayed deck
beta beamed
gamma masted
discarnate as an offshore breeze
blowing spectral vapours
along ultra-violet cliffs.
Everything about me is close-hauled
glowing.

Shelley McAlister

The Year of the Sheep*

This year I fancy myself a Swaledale sheep
scraggy and thin standing around
with an ovine stare
steadily chewing
fleeced but not knowing it yet

When I've had a belly full of wind and rain
up on the Edge I'll drive myself down for a nip
out of the coffee-coloured Tees nipping
at my own heels circling menacingly
round rocky outcrops

Just as I'm about to leap a drystone wall
there by the Low Force where a stile
crosses the Pennine Way there'll lurk
a sculptor who'll capture me
in sandstone and leave me there
midleap

Or I'll be baa baa bad
wooed away from the flock
by the comforting crook of a poet
sprayed with words I'll roam
around like a troubador spreading
verse throughout the dales

Lost I'll stray into the arms of a fibre artists
posing as a good shepherd she'll steal
my wool and dye it
and spin it into balls
and knit it into jumpers
and put the jumpers back on me

A martyr for art I'll drift
through the valleys swathed in sandstone
and jumpers and verse seeing nothing
but concepts and the wool
I have pulled over my own eyes

Shelley McAlister

Cross-section of the Head of a Man Eating a Plum

Not a photograph
this is real time
the man is eating the plum now.
The mouth is a hollow cavity
of red resonance
behind that, spiney
rings of oesophagus
where he will swallow. But not yet.
Now the plum is whole.

The nose is imperfect, slightly hooked
the brain a weather map,
an unfamiliar projection of the globe
where continents have broken up
and tributaries penetrate patches of dark rainforest.
There is a cold front moving in;
blue sea swirls around islands of red
their yellow coasts thin, exposed.

Marvel at this state-of-the-art imagery
this frontier of science
where hydrogen atoms driven mad
knock themselves out of alignment
reflect waves unknowingly
back at the scanner.

Or trust your intuition
enjoy the colours and contours
the comforting familiarity
of the face and its features
the similarity
of the brain and the plum.

                Published in The Rialto, no. 56 Nov 2004

Shelley McAlister

Years End

I sit alone now to survey the view
The breeze, and blush of autumn hue
I find in the colour and the leaf
A quiver of hope that brings me kind relief

My breath sits hot upon the air
Like mists that settle on the fields and dare
To sleep around the trees and near the rose
And rise and wend without purpose

Multitudes of scents can wind and set
My mind in reeling spin, my nose aflame
With colours red and orange, viridian
Wood smoke spark of burning summer’s lease

The crackle on the air the crispin leaf
Brown brittle now torn down an unseen thief
The wind blows cold upon my aging cheek
And winter waits pale shrouded sweet

I fail too like dying leaf free-falling to release

Felicity Fair Thompson

Picturing My Mother

You ask me what she looked like?
My collage, taken
from old photographs,
catches high cheek bones,
pretty hands, unquestioned cigarette.

My direct recollection? Little more
than a grey-blue haze of gentleness,
but for the ever-open button. No hint
of provocation just ease
of access to her slipping straps.

Joan Waddleton

Cutting the Grass

Moon blade slices
rough stalks break
sharp spikes of green
roll over like waves.

He takes the sickle back
to the Barn.
It hangs high
sharp blade worn thin in the middle.

He rakes up the grass.
Makes a place
for me to play.

Marion Carmichael

Cloisters

Cool shade
quiet space
well of pure water.

Paved walk
clacking beads
scented white roses.

Narrow way
blinding light
boundaries of box.

Gothic arches
dark corners
pink stone walls.

Locked gates
ordered lives
square of sky.

Marion Carmichael

London 'lations

The circus has come to town.
Glass-cracking voices, rib-crushing hugs,
sparkly earrings, flash dresses, scarlet lipstick,
the house shrinks as they gobble up the air.

They know everything.
Gadgets, easy food, stylish clothes
all are paraded for us to see.
Jokes spin above my head like plates,
fat aunts wobble
dodgy uncles slap their thighs and wink.
Stick thin cousins screech;
babies, passed like popcorn, gurgle.
Everyone talks,
even Dad joins in.
Mum smiles
until, the hooting car drives down the lane,
under a spotlight moon.

Marion Carmichael

The Angel*

Terrific body, I particularly like
The rear view, neat bum, great calves,
Smooth curve from skull base to nape neck,
Which I long to stroke,
But he is too high above me.
From the front I swear he is smiling,
Not the 'Aren't I gorgeous?  I love myself.'
More the, 'Hey honey, you look great.'
But his rigid arms stretch too wide,
He will never embrace me.
I shelter behind his ankle
From the biting northeast wind.

Kate MacDonell

Anyone at Home?

Looking into darkness, panes long gone,
I can't get close enough to see.
But the sill is too high anyway.
There is a tree growing inside,
Saplings instead of siblings.
The quiet rustle of leaves, the whisper
Of voices trapped between the walls.
Once full to overcrowding,
An old mother, the son, his wife,
Eleven children at the height
Before the eldest moved on
And the youngest two died.
The aunt, malcontent,
Grudgingly grateful.
And the dogs and the cats,
And the mice and the rats,
And the rush of mornings,
The bustle of washdays,
The weary heat of baking,
Relaxation, mending and making,
Companionship of evenings,
Joy in celebration, support in death.
And as the slates slide
And the chimneys collapse,
The door wedged forever
Between open and closed,
With foundations so strong,
Why is this all that's left?

Kate MacDonell

Farm Music

He was always an early riser and in the mornings
I stirred from sleep, hearing the pull of the bar,
Swing of the gate, whistle for the dog, the tramping
Of hooves as the herd entered the byre and a low voice,
Gentle, encouraging, “Come on girl.”

He sawed sticks on winter evenings,
I lay awake listening to the high-pitched squeals,
Like a giant dentist’s drill, the rattle of the tractor engine,
And the heavy thuds of thrown logs.
Pain waves vibrated between my ears.

Bagpipe practice in the barn on summer evenings,
I stayed awake listening to the stuttering start,
The puffing, wailing and then melodies filled
The night air, jigs, reels, anthems, hymns.
The Celtic laments haunted my dreams.

Kate MacDonell

Holding On

Was it knowing, cradling her young hand,
The fingernails were dead, the strands
Of fair hair three months gone,
The parting made already,
Ends split off into the great divide?
Was it she knew too, and understood
That what we’d do, the play, the words,
The love, were past and done?
Grief then, and she was still alive.
Powerless I mourned as illness
Pulled her off across some pale dry sand
Dune, through a private waterless
Wasteland to that ghastly blank.
That end. No age at all, so final.
Or is death a repentant thief?
What gives her immortality, an after life
Behind her mother’s eyes? Grown,
And not grown, child, adult, whispers,
Lies, there and not there. Pain. She is.
Was. Is. The sweetest girl, selfish,
Funny, headstrong, adolescent, vain.
Of mine, no other child, daughter, sister,
Woman, can I count the same.

Felicity Fair Thompson

Mayday

Go snare a dream.

Across the gorge a giant is blowing bubbles
too far away to catch the ppah of his lips
even the roar of gas
imagined not heard.

one after one they rise,
escape through the ring of the woods,
move East, colours sharp
against a duck egg sky.

Hungry fingers stretch;
each one eludes me, makes its way
across the city. There is no string.
One after one they drift beyond my reach.

Mayday 3

A scene in black and white
out of place against the wealth,
the recklessness of Dublin's Christmas Eve.

Black clad figure, ominously pale,
beside a schoolroom chalkboard
names of Irish poets carefully inscribed.

writers of rustic verse
steeped in love and lyricism,
the sound of bees, the moon in silver shoes.

I dropped a coin, made my choice;
his voice was strong - at times an orchestra,
at times a tender soloist.

'Read me some Heaney.' Do you know Twice Shy?'
we shared the 'mushroom loves that puff and burst
in hate.' Too soon for me a crowd had gathered.

That night the moon was full, glared through church yews,
picked out a sturdy rope, a dangling form.
His audience gone; he took his leave of Aids.

Joan Waddleton

Which Swim Will be the Last?

Although September's dreams are spun in gold
you never know which swim will be the last.
You spell a charm to make the weather hold,
you'd like to dam the moments splashing past.

You never know which swim will be the last.
Each day you spark a prayer to the sun.
You'd like to dam the moments splashing past
but sense this is a game that winter's won.

Each day you spark a prayer to the sun,
you sing and dance your homage on the shore
but sense this is a game that winter's won.
You know the water's warmth will not endure.

You sing and dance your homage on the shore.
You slip each morning into green silk sea.
You know the water's warmth will not endure
yet autumn's chill outreaches memory.

You slip each morning into green silk sea.
You spell a charm to make the weather hold,
while autumn's chill outreaches memory
and still September's dreams are spun in gold.

Lydia Fulleylove

Lunch Date

Although it's early yet for lunch outdoors,
at one o'clock the sun balances
on a cloud. You forget the rawboned year,
turn up the collar of your fleece, take bread,
cheese, tea and radio. You hunch
beneath the damson tree, wedge the damp bench
against its trunk, squint into light
which hints at brilliance; consider shades.
The cat unfolds a doubtful paw. You grip
your mug; heat seeps through fingertips.
Your shoulders soften. Lighten up says sky.
Sun tilts at clouds and still you smile until
northeaster undercuts. Sky dulls like winter skin.
You think not yet; pick up your plate; go in.

Lydia Fulleylove

The Boy in the Icehouse

To set the scene.  It is Sunday
morning-spring.  Rooks
insist in the just turning
ash trees.  A lawn away
wild garlic nudges the icehouse.

Inside.  Lost Tim
slips on the step.
The dark water winks
at the slabbed stone
and the garlic looks in.

Tim's bare toes meet
the cold.  He doesn't scream.
The hart's tongue licks
his ankles and the icehouse
dreams of blocks of snow.

Above his damp black curls
the roof extends a cautious
drip and Tim suddenly
feels at home.  He freezes.
The icehouse breathes chill joy.

To set the scene.  It is Sunday
morning-spring.  Rooks
insist in the just turning
ash trees.  A lawn away
wild garlic nudges the icehouse.

(after WS Graham)

Lydia Fulleylove