Five Haiku & Three Short Poems by Teresa Godfrey

 

Five Haiku

 

 

Deep in the forest

the sound of falling beech nuts

shelling the silence.

 

 

Pines shed their needles,

seamstresses of the forest

dropping their stitches.

 

 

Night in the forest

crossings and double-crossings.

Journeys of life and death.

 

 

A pair of buzzards

whistling in the sky above.

I take root below.

 

 

Like a bird crashing

hard against a window pane

my world has frozen.

 

 

Three Short Poems

 

Words

 

They followed me

into the forest today

asking useless questions.

 

Trampling the foxgloves

and buttercups. Chattering

through the pine needles.

 

Drowning out the birdsong

and raising themselves

above the waterfall.

 

Making themselves so important

even the rain couldn’t shut them up.

 

 

Inside the Earth

 

there is a core of hurt

swelling like the cold sea above.

Sometimes red-hot tears burst through

making mountains that live forever.

 

 

Song

 

If you let yourself,

the song you will hear is your own.

 

Like the sailor who hears the mermaid sing,

you will never go home again.

 

I have heard you singing.

Teresa Godfrey’s poetry and short stories have been published in The Galway Review, The Honest Ulsterman, Boyne Berries, Rhythm of Hearts, Ireland’s Own, Crannog, Corncrake, North West Words, the Blue Nib, the Community Arts Partnership anthologies Resonance 2018, Find 2019, and Vision 2020, the 2018 Highland Poetry anthology (USA), and Curlew (UK). Her poetry was selected for inclusion in Her Other Language: Northern Irish Women Writers Address Domestic Violence and Abuse. Her first poetry collection titled This, Also, Is Mercy was published by Summer Palace Press in 2021 and her debut novel, Wipe Out, was published by Sunbury Press USA in 2022.