Five Poems by Julie Sampson

 

What we did next

 

We knew

we shouldn’t go

up the deserted drive

but, farm kids,

we didn’t pay heed to Trespass

and it wasn’t as if that afternoon

this was the first time,

summertimes we’d trekked our years

farm to farm and back

along the Ashridge lanes

claimed our dens —

 a camp snuck in the dip in Bow Park’s hedge

 the nook in the hen-shed in West Villies

 a hollow high in the haystack bales, in Frost Close,

 dark corner in Whitemoor’s linhay,

 the bamboo island with ducks on the pondinthewood.

 

Usually, except Tessa

on her milking round,

no one else was around.

 

We passed through the gap

where the white gate between the stone pillars

once was, down the track into the wood —

 its backdrop of oaks, beech and birch

 its layerings of hazel and holly

 its streaking jay

 its weaving rivulets

 king cups and milkmaids hemming the bottom brook,

 

we passed

 kingfisher’s holes in oaks

 owl’s nests in mossy hollows in tree roots

 robins rustling for insects in the undergrowth

 woodpeckers tapping out their enigmatic code.

 

Speaking, the speaking branches

casting their nets

taking us, taking us in we’re

one with the wind

one with the birds

and scrambling creatures

the fungi labyrinths

one with all the ever before ever after tree-story.

 

When we leave the wood the other side

 and climb the last lane

 round the corner to

Ashridge’s back track,

just before the tumble-down Great Barn,

we are children of myth covered in sigils and leaves

gabbling to one another in the oldest language…

 

No, we knew we shouldn’t go there,

at least not inside, through the broken window —

Do not enter. You are Trespassing, it said.

You can guess what we did.

 

Farewell

 

They meet in the nave

the family cluster, gladly grieving,

gossiping across the aisles,

and various other of the village community

heave in through the imposing fan-tailed porch

escaping the unexpected heatwave

to respect their newly dead.

 

The warden offers a taper to the white candles

tokens to the old faith.

 

The curate leads his sheep, the twin cavaliers,

respecting their master, they’re soon asleep,

snoring at his feet.

 

The sibling trio stumble over their self-imposed poetic obituary.

 

The organ’s solemn processional,

later, the dutiful prayers

and humorous epitaph delivered by the Team Vicar.

Ripple of communal chortle.

 

Then the dignified bearers lift the departed towards his last resting place

accompanied by the wreathed floral tractor.

 

We bend our heads.

 

Finally, all hell lets loose.

Combine Harvester blasts out

fanning the vaulted roof with barrelled Worsel sound.

 

We turn to one another

cachinnate our spirits beyond the awful sacrifice of grief.

 

The idyll of the luminous dream

 

        … the rumour of her 

become as remote as water 

falling over a distant weir,

then wholly forgotten

nothing left of her in anywhere —

 

we were all there,

the present 

packed with those we lost that year,

their elders, one generation back, 

the toddling steps of the ones who’ve just arrived —

all crying, conversing, quipping, 

even squabbling in the merry May Day air,

 

no expectation of grief to come 

stopping us from lulling in our present’s peace,

 

none, none of us having to wait 

until the rest

were born 

none having to wait to lose 

the others.

 

I wept.

We. Were. All. There.

 

Note: A half-found poem (lines from first stanza adapted from Cousin Rosamund, by Rebecca West)

 

I came here

seeking solace following a Prince’s death —

some of us, quiet subjects

with our ancient collective heart

(the age’s contagion still beating our streets)

find grief churning butterflies

black in the pits of our stomachs —

 

but today

Dartmoor took us into her tomb

and the weight

of them —

those unseen,

who once swathed my life’s air

hiding here

in spring’s undergrowth —

 

(crows stabbing new grass for worms,

algae bloom on underwater’s holy spring,

honey fungus strangling the rooted bed of greening ash) —

 

has been

intolerable.

 

Over across the cleave,

on Belstone’s summit slopes

those arterial sheep tracks

warren the leylines of moor’s palimpsest,

looking for ways to escape

this malevolent womb

they lift the invisibles high

to soar again,

away in crowning sky.

 

Copse

 

No sooner seen

than, fly-by-nights,

the exotic mayflies

drift on into the depths of Devon hinter-space.

 

Here, pied flycatchers

dart overhead

between hazel and birch

and in the damp shade remnants

of the oldest copse and coverts

where ferns and lichens drape

over moss-covered trees -

 

these gnarled oaks and hazels,

the Old Folk of Devon,

leaning on the steadying rocks

standing their ground

converse cheerily amongst themselves —

We be weel Bless Ee

 

but in the hinterlands,

the undergrowth underpinnings of laurel,

  rhododendron,

new species

            blowsy

vivacious

proliferate.

 

Once sprightly, the natives,

Oldies, are losing their grip

while the travelling deer

nibble the loosening roots at their feet.

 

In the glade of summer heat

oaks watch warblers and flycatchers flit

from tree to tree,

   exquisite,

visitants,

they will take their fill

then lift again to far off lands,

other attracting climes.

 

Blooming their glossy greens, their gutsy reds,

the laurels and rhodos

run beneath the wooded floor

shoot out along its liminal edge

then suss out the deepest crevice

beneath the ancient church,

intertwining anchoring laterals

across the faded epitaphs.

 

Soon they will  shuffle the oaks

 to copse’s outer extremities —

Who will hear their plaintive call

 quiverings

in the leaf-blowing winds?

 

But look – have faith in undercurrents,

the wise inter-crossings of this woodland web —

 

flinging arms around their rickety backs

younglings grasp their elder’s trembling limbs —

 

their leaf hairs

flecked with the frost

of foliose and crustose lichen,

their stipules camouflaged

with fringes of moss

with spangles of star-headed liverwort,

spores of lady fern. 

 

 

Julie Sampson - A widely published poet, Julie Sampson’s poems appear in a wide variety of magazines including, recently, Molly Bloom; Bindweed; Coven Poetry; LitWorld2; Amethyst Review and Projectionist's Playground. Sampson edited Mary Lady Chudleigh; Selected Poems, 2009 (Shearsman Books) and a poetry collection, Tessitura, was published by Shearsman, in 2014. Her pamphlet/chapbook It Was When It Was When It Was was published by Dempsey & Windle, in 2018. Her most recent collection is Fivestones (Lapwing, 2022). Sampson's work has been placed or listed in poetry competitions, including a ‘highly commended’ in the Geoff Stevens Memorial Poetry Prize, in 2019 and an 'honourable mention' in the Survision James Tate Memorial Prize, in 2021. Sampson has a PhD from the University of Exeter, on the writer H.D. Her author website is Julie Sampson; Twitter is @julieEsampson and Instagram julieesampson/writtenindevon.