Poetry London Competition 2008
Godfrey Ackers: FIRST PRIZE
The Canal Road
We trod the murram road, my Left and I.
Beside it, where an abu ashereen
feeds water to the cracking cotton fields,
in shade beneath a prickly pear we lie.
By tractor drawn the ridger delves its way,
its driver’s unclad feet its pedal work
until the furrows are complete then walk
to rest by us and sluice the sticking clay.
A thorn tree stands nearby and from its bole
suspends a terracotta pot; each day
with water filled it coolly sweats and sends
small drops to wet my hot and thirsty sole.
I asked my Left if it could understand.
‘He left me here’ she said ‘and you, Right, there.
My fraying toe loop needs repair. Will she
with tender fingers add another strand?’
All those who can now come to help the fray,
their babies on the donkeys’ backs with sacks
of cotton shoots, and all their shoes will rest
with us and pass the planters’ stooping day.
The family then weed while infants dream;
meantime our callous moulded contours bake,
our worn and unslaked leather dries and cracks,
forgot the nut oil’s cool restoring cream.
Stopped irrigation sets the cracking clay,
and migrants start to harvest cotton bolls.
The farmer wears us then to show his state
and count the bales and note how much they weigh.
Each year he walks along this murram way;
a hundred times he puts us on to save
unthinking feet from shard and stone. I ask
‘Why shake us off whene’er he goes to pray?’
Page(s) 20
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The