Ruth O'Callaghan
The Richness of Sea Brown Shingle
I could write of the slow tread
along the grey shore, the richness
of brown shingle, sea-burnished,
stored beneath stars pinning light
on the dog as he paws a dead gull:
the wine in my belly, redly warm.
On such a night the thin whistle
of the long gone train hangs over tracks
now tarmac-ed, the station master dead
and the driver, with more of a weft than a weave
to his uncertain feet, salutes sober days
when engines, now dismantled, would let steam,
softer than the sigh of Guinness after a long day’s scything:
here women huddled, their bags close gripped,
their tongues stilled but each eye raking
as the train, taking their young to London, carves
its unfinished journey between flat fields
farmed under gravid sky.
Dismissed from sight they unpurse lips,
their broad vowels deal out censure
like old currency consigned to a drawer
that’s suddenly opened: they harvest grievances,
heaving through the draughty sprawl of town
in a bitterness of rain.
Page(s) 18
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