Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

                                  red day
                                  plum blossom colours 
                                  emerge from shadow

 Dad can’t do it, what with his one leg and crutches and all. Mum can’t because of her shapes. Brothers won’t because they’ve overgrown. I do it, and don’t mind because it is something to do with as I like.

early dawn      criss-crosses of the garden      from ice-crazed puddles

   I practice hard. Soon it grows into an enmeshment of unlike equals. That’s how it goes! Besides, dad says that’s a good sign. No great shakes, as responses are easy to tickle and tease out. But every time it happens is wonderful and weird and tangential.
I keep my head down, feel good, and tell nobody - just in case. Smoke signals the full stop effort. Such a Sisyphean task is one for martyrs. “If it’s not done the Council could throw us out. What would then become of us?” Dad, serious, replies, “You’re right! Now we’re safe” Hear a seed of gratitude in the tone of his voice.

dug earth      moves from this place to that      after a shower weeds stir

   I dig and sweat and live in the ache of distant muscles. An aspiration to accept weeds as flowers falls on stony soil, preferring earth that, when crumbly touchy, is clean of them and richly browns piling up next to greens of buttercup grass. Most of all I like squatting and planting down into the earth’s deepest inside, pushing secret interiors, fingers burying under the darkest mystery. Down there shapes do secret things and personal things and powerful things that make me quiver. But I also plant above the earth. “They’re rhizomes” my brother, who will be a scientist, says. These ‘rhizomes’ lay half in half out of the earth. “They’re ‘flags”’ mum says. A square yard grows her ‘flags.’

bareback work      with an iris in her hand        she watches

Into other square yards are a cornucopia of baby things I’m given
by Mr. Sheehan. But for ‘at last’, he has a pack of wild boys with wildly uncombed ginger hair. ‘At last’ is also ginger, but combed
and plaited. “He’s ill,” says dad. “Too many of ‘em” mutters mum. Expressionless, he grows food. Gives me weak, leftover plants.

                                  perfumed earth
                                  a rusty gate pulls open
                                  on this solstice day

   Gerry Sheehan just wants to fist me every time we meet on account of how, when I was nine and his plump of a sister six or seven, I pulled the elastic of her dirty knickers and had a quick peep inside. She’s nothing there. Another worry for her mum and dad! Jerry is more worried about my ‘sin’, that’s blighted his family forever. “The slate must first be wiped cleaned” his church guy tells him. I don’t  go anywhere that tells me slates must be wiped clean by beating hell out of someone. That’s Old legal Testament mullarkey!

   Once Gerry came to my garden with his dad. My ‘sin’ must have driven his churchman big time mad because he even tried to beat
up my weak plants. O.K. he did it furtively, but that’s Gerry. He never came again. His brutal shoes and smelly feet can bugger off!
I don’t want to spend time with someone who tells anyone “Ee’s a blaidin’ sinner an’ oi yam gonna make ‘im fekin pays forrit. Farder McDonagal, oo evrydays dos gods good wirks, says everytink ‘bout sinning’ isn Baible.” “Where?” I make bloody sure he doesn’t get in the way of my plants doing good works for me, make sure they and me still speak the same speak, that our suns set with no harm done.

                                  sunbathed rain
                                  the soft bounce
                                  of leaves

   First appearances confirm my magician status. “Tank dem fir ‘elpin’ yus tru d bad toimes” Mr Sheehan tells me, who collects horse shit from the roads. “Good for roses.” I don’t have roses but do it anyway. Mum does it when I’m at The Grammar where I discover “manure should be well rotted before digging into earth.” Shit!

up and down earth   through sun and rain   plant games thrive

As they grow stronger and greens darken I talk more openly; if wilt, run for water; if weaken, tie to sticks, hoe out weeds and bowl slugs and snails over-arm into the rubbishy end garden. I also talk with birds, who click and flutter, and worms that hang over my fingers five at a time. At The Grammar I hear a worm can be cut in half and grow into two. No split to hold their sex! No head at both ends! Cut in two and don’t die! A few quick chops and mine squiggle on rich earth. Where there is five will be ten, twenty, forty, until the Cosmos is an arpeggio Medusa of worms. Their wriggling is frenzied. Jeez! They can’t be feeling pain! Bloody Grammar never told about that. Squat to watch. How do they heal? Where does the end with no mouth get one? Birds fly in and pick up the bits and fly off. This is a mysterious, a miracle garden.

                                  saturday evening
                                  replete with mixed aromas
                                  steam from clothes of dirt

 When, flushed, I carry in a ribbed, darkly green leaf, prime lettuce, whitely plump spring onions and the reddest skinned radishes ever, wet-lip looks, cowslips and hedgerows, a carousel path of salad days replace all others. “Wash them. We’ll eat ‘em fresh as fresh”. “Green fingers, ‘arry, that’s what ees got.” “Ee cer’unly ‘as. You ‘ave def-an-ut-ly got xtra speshull greeen fingurs”. “I know” I say, looking at them like they were extensions of magic wands grown on me by mistake. This is grown-up talk for ‘The Gift’. Read about it at The Grammar. An Aunt claims “it’s-frum-im-oose-name-cannotbe-spoke.” The brother who will be a scientist says “its genes.” “Don’t know about that” says dad, “but I do know it is a Gift of mighty pro-porsh-uns. Proof-of-the-puddin’-is-now-in-the-eatin’. So ‘ere’s to gifts” says dad, holding high his cup of brewed tea. “and to Stanerlee” says mum, holding hers up, too.

                                  May heat
                                  already The Gift
                                  needs water

 “Dad, have I really got The gift?” “Look at tha lettice. The size of it. An' thoseunyins an’ radishes. Have you got The Gift?” “Can I get a job with the gift?” “Don’t see much demand fur gardners ‘round ‘ere. Bu’ oo knows where such a Gift can take you”. I do so want to be a gardener when I grow up and, with food grown from well-rotted manure, feed poor children, even if some are like Gerry Sheehan. Face turned away, dad still sees my wet eyes. “Listen! There’s only two ways I know ov ge’ing’ owt ov this eestate”. “Yer cun crook yerself or brain yerself off” we singsong in chorus. “Any chance of mixin em?” Silence. More silence. “Maybe. Yes. M a y b e.” I stop listening, comfortable eating my green Gift.

                                  Wedding Feast
                                  rooms fill with ripples
                                  of The Gift