Michael Bartholomew-Biggs
Evening Reflection
for John and Marjut
Clay is clingy-rich as clotted cream
or porridge mixed with chocolate.
Water, ladled till it sprawls
and fills in fork-marks of old ploughings,
gleams like syrup thickening
in the amber chill of a sinking sun.
Last season’s careful furrows have unfolded,
slumped to hold a sullen puddle,
wide and still enough to mirror
stands of stalky silver birches
pricked by man-made stabs of light.
A dying bonfire? Walking lanterns?
Nearest is a glow behind a window
of a mute red house, suggesting
talk and cooking for someone
bound up with this ground
as tightly as the clinging earth
attaches to the cracks in working boots.
Oitmäki, Finland, August 2005
Michael Bartholomew-Biggs lives in London. His poems have been widely published in magazines and anthologies. For more information, see www.poetrypf.co.uk
Page(s) 54
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