The
houses I drew as a child
were
always the same. Substantial
like
Sunday dinner, yet light,
delicate
like silk with their solitary green tree,
small
white picket fence, a grey winding path
to
the red front door and a brown brick chimney
ready
for the first offering
of
the hearth.
This
was my perfect house
and
like my best laid plans
for
boats that never left harbours
the
flimsy perfection I reached for
through
the small irritations of life
are
memories black and white
like
cobwebs ghosts of wedding veils.
The Whisperers
Memories are deep
pools
fragments in riverbeds,
seaweed that suddenly
clambers round your leg
like ghosts.
They are a pot of
leftovers
you sometimes stir, try to swallow
the spilled milk and hunger
of disappointment
that sticks in your
throat.
They are black ravens
whispering into Odin’s ears,
the glint in their eyes clear to see
for they have the
memories
and they also have
a key
No trees at all
grief is
a small house
perched on the edge
of an estuary
there are
no trees at all
some years
all you can do
is keep walking
Eclipse
It’s the kind of
day
you’ve longed for
that grows longer
with heat
a molten light
that is the purity
of hope
after winter
but its wings are
blighted
with what gnaws at you
what leaves your ego
bruised like apples
that rough tongued
handling
and the slights you
imagine
rain dark moles
on what you wish
was a thicker skin.
The poem of the
earth is ending
Maybe it was the
way she dressed that did it –
short skirts in
high summer, heat rising
from skin, how
she’d try to not draw attention
to herself, draping
night’s grey blanket
over her shoulders.
Maybe she let her
guard down when
she was absorbed in
drawing harebell blues,
sloe purples
through the pink blush of dawn
and slut red
sunsets, or maybe
it was that one
time she’d had the temerity
to flick a beam, so
it bounced off
heather granite and
frost crystals
to kiss the green hills.
Maybe she was
always
the collateral
damage of power,
need, greed, and
maybe
it was just the
strength of her
so she needed to
feel the lesson
of who was really
in charge.
They say alarm
bells rung by firefighters’ hands
are the warning of
a lover,
but this is the
story of dark streets and violence,
the kiss without
consent.
While you were
having a laugh, I was always
minding my own
business. I might always
get the blame, but
skirts don’t rape
the earth or strip
away its dignity.
Mercury rises, ice
caps melt.
The poem of the
earth is ending.
*Wallace Stevens (the poems of heaven and hell have been written, it remains to write the poem of the earth”
Love these poems, Caroline Johnstone. More, please.
ReplyDelete