Two Poems by Clare Bonetree

 

How I Keep Going

With thanks to Austin Kleon

 

Over and over and over

I worship at the altar

of what I believe to be

my deepest desire;

Thus will I attain

the most happiness for the world

and all who suffer therein -

for even the lowliest and least

assuming are worthy of love.

This is what drives me to make love

to the world with my words.

Have no doubt of my consistency -

though my heart is soft, and

my tongue twists with trying

to make sense, my aim is

never less than true,

my purpose clear, pure;

Birthed in the breath of the breezes

that caress the ageless mountains. 

 

 

Letters

For Mary Shelley

 

Grey fog inclouds her mind

a sense of place escapes her

everywhere she is lost     but here

 

here at her mother’s headstone    

she knows exactly who she is

tracing her name spelling her self    

 

squeezing small warm fingers into

newlearned letters     cold hard edges

receiving childtrust fleshy and real

 

requiting her mother’s love

fitting determination to form

committing to the chiselled stone

 

faith in the lodestone of her name 

and a promise to write her own fate.

Clare Bonetree lives in the riverine Lugg valley of the Anglo-Welsh borderlands. In the last few years she has been published in various print anthologies and online, including in Lothlorien Journal, and has contributed to community poetry and arts projects. In the 1990s she co-founded the multilingual Outloud poetry nights in Hong Kong. Clare’s writing explores themes of loss, memory, and hope as a practice.