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

Poetry Library Southbank Centre - The Poetry Library housing the Arts Council Collection at Southbank Centre

« Previous item
Contents of this issue
Next item »

Katherine Gallagher

print this page

Hedge

 

Forsythia – my first hedge planted
with roots pillaged from a neighbouring tip.
I have watched it spread, reach out,
flag its statement – a yellow furore,
armfuls of velvet starflowers to throw
in the air, give to passers-by:
hedge-gold, this harvest I revel in
where yellow is traversed by sun
and the thicket locks me in birdsong.

I have been waiting for this golden rain –
for its sudden flux, lemon butter madness,
the flare of it showering over full stems.

I am in love with its brazenness – its ferocity
investigates and opens up the sun. This moment
is gold in the hand – mesmeric glints to shelter in –
a saffron-walled room en plein air, an alfresco walk
through found treasure.

Here is a riot, undeclared: tree-certainty, tree-silence –
each year a new layer as it spreads its yellow further, further. . .
No one writes this mini-book as well as it writes itself.

 

Page(s) 13

Back to top