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Five poems

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UHT

This is snow’s milk, brought home as the skies lost
Themselves in the black flower of the first frost,
Stowed under chairs, not drunk.

You were not born when snow lay for a week,
No milk van whined, streets burned with cold and sleep,
Soft leaf, warm cars, lay sunk.

I was not born when ration books clipped clothes,
The Forties, lost in drifts, when sparrows froze,
Inches of ice broke troughs.

Are we all dinosaurs, as we grow old,
Red coats, not khaki, piped rooms never cold,
No fever, just slight coughs?

I sweep. I shift the box. I hear it gurgling:
The dawn’s shout, under eaves, alarm’s far ring,
Warm milk, sweet air, sour spring.

Alison Brackenbury was born in Lincolnshire in 1953. She now lives in Gloucestershire, where she has worked for almost twenty years in the family metal finishing business. Her latest collection is Singing in the Dark (Carcanet, 2008). New poems can be read at her website: www.alisonbrackenbury.co.uk. Her collections include Dreams of Power (1981), Breaking Ground (1984), Christmas Roses (1988), Selected Poems (1991), 1829 (1995), After Beethoven (2000) and Bricks and Ballads (2004). Her poems have been included on BBC Radio 3 and 4. Her work recently won a Cholmondeley Award.

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