Four Wonderful Poems by Gary Bills

 

CUCKOO LIGHT 

 

Standing stones are dancers in the round 

Or midnight hags who met to do their worst. 

They froze in time to sink into the ground, 

Drowning in earth, and drowning while they cursed.  

Their beldam hats are sliding through the loam, 

One inch, one eon, while yarns like harebells thrive. 

Our will for fireside mischief brings them home: 

Dead tales that in the telling come alive. 

But how to pitch the marvellous and true?  

On each Midsummer’s dawn, a bobbing light  

Will visit every stone, and sharp on cue, 

From that grey pause which takes the place of night, 

The spring’s last cuckoo calls the solstice sun, 

And summer comes, while shadows stretch and run.

 

HOTHOUSE 

  

Butterflies 

not beautiful 

not beautiful! 

  

God’s own puppets – 

creepy things! 

  

held up by strings, 

they're spindle-picking, 

spindle -picking - 

think their legs will always scratch! 

I think their wings are eyes and blood 

I think their wings are rotten leaves, 

whatever 

came to hand to make them bright, 

whatever came to hand to make them dark – 

whatever- whatever – 

whatever-whatever 

  

how they creep me out – 

they creep me out! 

 

Who is it lets them down – 

who lets them down 

who lets them down 

on catgut - from the light- 

who lets them down? 

  

not cool – not cool – not ever cool – 

  

antennae only snips of flex - 

  

When God’s at play, his act begins to creak  

(it’s not so great) 

and every wing he makes is losing dust, 

they’re losing dust, 

and soon enough, the strings will break and blow – 

they’ll break and blow 

 O 

sweep away 

with brush and pan – 

with brush and pan 

O sweep away 

the folded, crippled victims of his show. 

JOHN CLARE 

 

He watched the badger take the knocks – old Brock 

At bay, whose passing was a homily 

On dying well, for every beast and man. 

His was a conker culture, dark and seasoned  

Like a table for the vicar; not quite 

Elegant, but honest to enchantment, 

Until the fashion turned it out of doors 

And made Clare doubt the signposts in his mind: 

Where he had been and even where he was; 

A lost love pilgrimage… pining like a dog, 

His vows were to a ghost and not his wife; 

But still he found himself, as best he could: 

Howling or cajoling; proud, in the asylum. 

I am, he said, and made the silence nod

 

 

FOSSIL BOOK 

 

Earth adores the trilobites’ disasters, 

(Archived in shale). To Earth, they are not dead, 

(Although they lie in clusters on the slab) 

She loves them all, and also bristling worms,  

And lamp-eyed fish at depths, within their layers, 

Though not one bubble rises from the dark. 

But insects rise, some larger than a child; 

They’re hawking – flit by ferns as tall as trees 

Or rattle over eon-plains of strata… 

Oh God knows where those dragonflies reside! 

(How is it I can hear them in their glades,  

When Earth’s a book that keeps both sea and land?) 

So many wings, inscribed, on shattering pages; 

Only God could break that volume wide.

Gary Bills was born at Wordsley, near Stourbridge. He took his first degree at Durham University, where he studied English Language and Medieval Literature, and he has subsequently worked as a journalist. He is currently the fiction editor for Poetry on the Lake, and he is enjoying studying for his MA, at BCU. His poetry has appeared in numerous publications, including The Guardian, Magma, HQ and Acumen, and he has had three full collections published, – “The Echo and the Breath” (Peterloo Poets, 2001); “The Ridiculous Nests of the Heart” (bluechrome, 2003); and “Laws for Honey” (erbacce 2020). In 2005, he edited “The Review of Contemporary Poetry” for bluechrome. Gary has given professional readings at the Ledbury Poetry Festival, Poetry on the Lake in Italy, and at the Poetry Trend Munich Festival in 2010. His work has been translated in to German, Romanian and Italian. A US-based indie publisher, The Little French, published his first novel, “A Letter for Alice” in 2019, and a collection of stories, “Bizarre Fables”, in 2021. These were illustrated by his wife, Heather E. Geddes.