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

An erratic rocking, a hip bone sprung from its socket
a locket, an erratic face with phenocrysts out of place
on a pallid limestone of sea-shells held to the ear
the sound of ocean locked in ice,

and corals, warm-milk lagoons squeezed in a vice.
Herculean cold, a caesarian by frost needles, stretch-
marks of a birth wrapped in an ice sheet, wrapped
in lichen, moss and rock flour.

Kidnapping children, cold Hercules, too many of us
to carry at once, set us down carelessly, mothers
receding, arms held out to us, ours to them
fingers a slow opening crevasse.

I, an erratic from Westmorland in Yorkshire
granite block growing from a carbonate bedrock,
a broch, a lode, a chemical stranger ill-at-ease
with language difficulties.

I have a weathered scar where my crystals mashed
my mother has the other half, she is Newfoundland
I am Scotland drifting further and further apart
our wounds roughly stitched, scabbed.

You circle me, climb upon my back, measure me,
chip a piece off me, smell of cordite, scream
of your raw nerves serves you right despite
your fancy american Estwing hammer.

Bring a sledge-hammer next time, a drill to core
me, windfall apple that I am. You pour acid on me
to prove I do not fizz, poke me, squeeze, roll me
up and smoke me,

eat my shade, use me as a plp, discuss, pass
electrons through me, excite my atoms, write me
up in Nature a famous foreigner, no way
to treat a guest.

A priest has blessed me, the moors baptised me
a small stone abraded a font where my fontanelle
once was, where I was a cooling pluton
foxes drink.

A chip off the old block. Funny? I laugh until I cry.
I learn about my family from Geologists' whispers
and the mirror of my quartz, mica, feldspar,
takes me home.