Severn Rainbows
(Worcester 1980)
Old water seeks me out,
leaking through consciousness,
pillowed by twenty years of dreams
passing as swiftly as rain clouds
on a wind fresh from Wales.
The day we bought the house
by the allotment,
me ballooning, drinking milk,
building bones, ponderously
tracing the Severn’s loops
around my shrunken world.
The dark soil of our garden
birthing autumn raspberries,
russet dahlias, a son.
A son who, loving the night,
banished sleep as irrelevant,
opened our eyes to new
dimensions of moonlight;
crescent absurdities of
clanking railyard,
silent canal,
hushed cathedral,
and nursery rhymes chanted
in the long corridor towards morning.
And through it all
the Severn marched implacable;
Shrewsbury,
Bridgnorth,
Kidderminster,
Ombersley,
linking our before and after,
her water passing
through a million lives,
into a sea thick
with the ripeness of every-day.
magazine list
- Features
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- 10th Muse
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- 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