Cora Greenhill
Retiring to the Country
The cockerel that rapes my dreams
over and over
drilled through the open window
where the afternoon had hummed me asleep
in a haze of winey sunshine.
Dogs barked to tear the flesh.
Anna stamped home on concrete, slamming gates
(I was that child once).
I’ve slunk from the house
like a disgruntled cat
to the woods as evening ripens.
I feel me taking root here
among the warty leafless oaks
my feet like fists in earth, clenching at rocks.
Rocks. Gritty and frowning.
I want to grow my toes around them.
I want them to hold me here
with solid elderly for company
- here, where thin, aspiring spring
(a single stalk of fern
unfurls its slender length
from the thick thighs of parting roots
is overshadowed
and ragged anemones
droop feeble flakes of white
anaemic on corky bark.)
- here, where bald trees still dance
and grisled trunks hold sway
I have staying power,
am undisturbed.
I hear to the hollow heart of the woodpecker
wear a branching crown
see dizzying depths of grace
in a stately naked dance of ancient trees.
And smile to think that I will rot like these
decomposing stinking rich with life.
Page(s) 79
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