Three Fabulous Poems by Glen Wilson

 

Bear for Spring

 

She will be punch-drunk,

rheumy-eyed but ready

to leave the maudlin warmth

of the deep dark den.

 

Shuffling off three cubs bent

as commas around her,

they have grown but are still children

with harsh lessons ahead.

 

Their heartbeats thrum in a rhythm slow

then quicken and beckon in their low thunder,

parsed by the echoes of all the past lightning

and the fresh flash of light in their eyes.

 

The air has lost the chill it borne,

moss is abundant underfoot

and fungi has been given its head,

the ground shivers green.

 

She pads towards the river

to slake her thirst, the cubs follow,

nostrils flaring and remembering

winter is always pursued by spring,

 

they cross their internal wildernesses,

expanding primal scent, searching

the lattices of the roused forest

to find their wildness again.

 

The Scrimshander

 

It was too dangerous to whale at night

so we found space below deck to etch

markings on hewn flutes from off white

tusks, clean now of the briny pink flesh.

I draw you there, face and curved neck,

raised up by the rubbed in candle black,

in a garland frame. Mottled ivory flecks

where the needle slipped, open a crack.

 

We have flensed many but need more,

the hot rendering smell on deck coats

us all; the hand who threw the harpoon

to me, barreling up the oil to take ashore.

It’s terrifying when they rear up near the boats

But we always overcome, wailing is their tune.

 

A Bellowing of Bullfinches

 

wakes the innocent part of me

and that drags the guilty half with it.

They come though no one knows

who or why they have been called.

Regardless they are here, I hear how one

picks off where another finishes,

turning mere notes into melodies,

in a sky arrayed with medleys of birdsong.

 

The selfish element of me doesn’t know

these songs of grace, resents the interruption,

but the part that wins this time listens,

listens with both ears and mute tongue

to the beauty of this ancient angelus,

pushing the window further open.

 

 

Glen Wilson is a multi-award winning Poet from Portadown. He won the Seamus Heaney Award for New Writing  in 2017, 

the Jonathan Swift Creative Writing Award in 2018 and The Trim Poetry competition in 2019. 

His poetry collection An Experience on the Tongue is out now with Doire Press.

     

https://glenwilsonpoetry.wordpress.com/ 

Twitter @glenhswilson 

https://www.doirepress.com/bookstore/poetry/