Winter Solstice.
I seek not to banish the hag-night
but welcome her shivering breath,
as wrapped in her star-mapped cloak
she gives me her second sight.
The Walking Dead.
The frogs are still in our pond.
I mean they are still
In our pond.
Under the green-sludge surface.
They breathe cold and slow
Don’t surface.
Knowing to move is to die.
On the day that is.
Some must die.
It’s like when we hold our breath.
So that we aren’t seen.
Bursting breath.
It was games of hide and seek.
I learnt to be quiet.
Not to seek.
It comes in useful sometimes.
When you are angry.
Still sometimes.
I am skilled at noticing.
Without being seen.
Noticing.
In the dusk gloom of moon light,
Our frogs hop free and
air feels light.
So heavy to hide away.
Invisible wants
put away.
As a child I learnt this game.
Watch and be still. I
learned this game.
Children.
I have collected shells and teeth
in chewing gummed pockets
and in the lines of a seam.
They are friction in my grief.
I display them on a shelf
in a bottle of cobalt blue
and in my old tobacco pots.
I am proud of my wealth.
I never did like sewing up holes
but I keep a wicca basket
and my body bleeds.
I was stitched in timely patrols.
I iron where the socks are spread
but I melted the rag-rugs
and glued your names inside.
You won’t get lost now. Or dead.
I have skin that’s been burnt
in the silent oven fire
and in the steam-soak of a kettle.
They were hard lessons learnt.
I once wove dollies of golden corn
in a cold grey school room
and you two breathing inside me.
It was the day you were born.
Teaching The Death In Me How To Live.
(Collected poems and stories 2019-2021)
