Pam Russell
Borderlands
(with thanks to Andrew Greig for When they lay bare)
An old drove road, a trickle of stones
where once a cottage stood
beside its rowan tree.
Forts and camps and Roman roads,
a resonance of raids,
reivers and family feuds.
Beneath grey skies as wet as seas
where colours weld to steel,
wide-humped moorlands drown in heather.
Mist closes in as the way rises higher:
a frail old loaning skewing east,
with corbies skirling above the trees.
Up in the clouds there's a burbling laverock,
a cushie doo croons in the sauchs,
a pheasant skreeks within the wood.
Wrapped in shawls these Borderlands
stand close, clean in the snell wind's air
that ever keens across the dykes.
Glimpses of round green hills through murk:
veils of vapour clasp the Border,
weave into it and disappear.
Page(s) 22
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