Judy Gahagan
Playing with Fire in the Country
And this would be the view: uncommunicative backs
of Suffolk humps; a broken line of freezing barbered trees
the wintering company of rooks.
If this were my life, my window
this my home, my day after day, I’d be obsessed
with cryptic shifts on grass of shadow
a cloud stalking the tractor’s progress
a dog’s outing, the baleful wintering company of rooks in curia.
Would I learn to calm the empty endless
window-shopping for events
for anything in the paper? For terror? I concoct a plot around
that dun figure sloping along the fence
to a defunct premises’ blackened windows
two other faceless persons are lighting a bonfire in front of.
The brick’s slow rose glow
bloodies the January mist
and they’re off to warm their hands. I sense satanic heat
as the fire devours the grist
they feed on it. The fire is greedy as my eyes
for anything... how cold this stranger’s room, this home;
each dusk I’d light a meagre fire
to stoke up the hoodoo with showers of sparks
warm up my soul in front of while dusk extinguished
the broken line of barbered trees.
And if I could be still?
Allow the nothing? Just watch rooks land and stalk, red willows flare
against another morning’s pale
cold. How cold would be this nothing more
this fear. Who are they? What are they doing?
Another faceless one sidles through the broken wall.
Judy Gahagan has published poetry, prose and translations in a number of magazines; a volume of short stories, two pamphlets and a volume of poetry. She runs courses in psychology and poetry and is currently busy on a novel about dream research.
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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