Holly
Under sullen rain
five mouse-light longtail tits
nudge and huddle in dark spiny leaves
against my bottle window.
A small child trimmed with fur
nimbles homeward
past my gate where one night-eyed rabbit
crouches at edge to browse between gravel.
Back from thirty years
call it exile or call it coming home.
Savage, domestic,
that other daily room
held out by wavered glass
fills with dusk or dawn, time counted
by passing weather. Dapper in sunlight
a robin in the holly
unsentimental seven months from Christmas
rips the life off sweetmeat grubs
to settle his household debts.
A familiar shift patterns the grasses
where always the same animal
now escapes me.
This country’s lower sun
casts me the shadow of a taller woman
beyond my body’s stretch:
exile won’t do it, coming home won’t do it.
Restless air scrapes
prickles over glass
and makes no mark.
Among a late spring’s tight green berries
the black wizen of winter
grows fragile
crumbles in the twiddling beaks
of fluffed gregarious birds.
Page(s) 93
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