Peter Scupham
A Birthday Tryptych
I.
Birth days: as of the spirit.
She cannot dissemble.
We break a fiery bread.
How should we navigate
The waves’ coarse turmoil
Without appointed stars?
A luminary day, then.
Light of the first magnitude,
Confirm our chosen course.
Tides, in their slow recession,
Delay about your fingers
A light sweet freight of shells.
When fresh seas break,
May that beached, miraculous wrack
Still hold its water lights.
On this your name day,
Under Janus, God of thresholds,
Past and future both become you.
II.
The true gift claims us.
Look! The flowered paper
Spills and crinkles.
A drift of white tissue:
Snow wreaths in May
We missed last winter.
And the small sign disclosed
Says in a new voice:
I tell of love in the world
To steady and delight you.
A long draught fills our horn;
We cannot exhaust her.
We read a common language
Runed in each offered hand.
Here, riddles are their answers.
Eyes rehearse tender cues.
All images compose and celebrate
The selves we have become.
III.
None can walk safely.
The roads are dark, unsigned,
The sky precariously blue.
We must endure
Flowers, the rain’s refreshment,
Each beautiful absurdity;
Accept with clear laughter
The dissonance of white hair,
Pain at the source.
A tree shakes at your window
Her brilliance of leafwork.
Admiration heals us.
Our vulnerability preserves.
To counter such a strength
Time’s tactics have no skill.
Love sustains. By this avowal
We cancel fear, whatever tremors
Approach us from the bowed horizon.
Page(s) 7-8
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