She is Fierce

by Ana Sampson

  (bird, bell, tree, fish)

  to the shrill of the bird and the plop of the fish

  and the clang of the bell

  and the stories they tell

  the stories they tell,

  Molly, the tree, the bird, the fish and the bell.

  Liz Lochhead

  Ode on the Whole Duty of Parents

  The spirits of children are remote and wise,

  They must go free

  Like fishes in the sea

  Or starlings in the skies,

  Whilst you remain

  The shore where casually they come again.

  But when there falls the stalking shade of fear,

  You must be suddenly near,

  You, the unstable, must become a tree

  In whose unending heights of flowering green

  Hangs every fruit that grows, with silver bells;

  Where heart-distracting magic birds are seen

  And all the things a fairy-story tells;

  Though still you should possess

  Roots that go deep in ordinary earth,

  And strong consoling bark

  To love and to caress.

  Last, when at dark

  Safe on the pillow lies an up-gazing head

  And drinking holy eyes

  Are fixed on you,

  When, from behind them, questions come to birth

  Insistently,

  On all the things that you have ever said

  Of suns and snakes and parallelograms and flies,

  And whether these are true,

  Then for a while you’ll need to be no more

  That sheltering shore

  Or legendary tree in safety spread,

  No, then you must put on

  The robes of Solomon,

  Or simply be

  Sir Isaac Newton sitting on the bed.

  Frances Cornford

  When I Was a Bird

  I climbed up the karaka tree

  Into a nest all made of leaves

  But soft as feathers

  I made up a song that went on singing all by itself

  And hadn’t any words but got sad at the end.

  There were daisies in the grass under the tree.

  I said, just to try them:

  ‘I’ll bite off your heads and give them to my little children to eat.’

  But they didn’t believe I was a bird

  They stayed quite open.

  The sky was like a blue nest with white feathers

  And the sun was the mother bird keeping it warm.

  That’s what my song said: though it hadn’t any words.

  Little Brother came up the path, wheeling his barrow

  I made my dress into wings and kept very quiet

  Then when he was quite near I said: ‘sweet – sweet.’

  For a moment he looked quite startled –

  Then he said: ‘Pooh, you’re not a bird; I can see your legs.’

  But the daisies didn’t really matter

  And Little Brother didn’t really matter –

  I felt just like a bird.

  Katherine Mansfield

  School Parted Us

  from Brother and Sister, Sonnet XI

  School parted us; we never found again

  That childish world where our two spirits mingled

  Like scents from varying roses that remain

  One sweetness, nor can evermore be singled.

  Yet the twin habit of that early time

  Lingered for long about the heart and tongue:

  We had been natives of one happy clime

  And its dear accent to our utterance clung.

  Till the dire years whose awful name is Change

  Had grasped our souls still yearning in divorce,

  And pitiless shaped them in two forms that range

  Two elements which sever their life’s course.

  But were another childhood-world my share,

  I would be born a little sister there.

  George Eliot

  Timetable

  We all remember school, of course:

  the lino warming, shoe bag smell, expanse

  of polished floor. It’s where we learned

  to wait: hot cheeked in class, dreaming,

  bored, for cheesy milk, for noisy now.

  We learned to count, to rule off days,

  and pattern time in coloured squares:

  purple English, dark green Maths.

  We hear the bells, sometimes,

  for years, the squeal and crack

  of chalk on black. We walk, don’t run,

  in awkward pairs, hoping for the open door,

  a foreign teacher, fire drill. And love

  is long Aertex summers, tennis sweat,

  and somewhere, someone singing flat.

  The art room, empty, full of light.

  Kate Clanchy

  A Glass of Tea

  (after Rumi)

  Last year, I held a glass of tea to the light. This year,

  I swirl like a tealeaf in the streets of Oxford.

  Last year, I stared into navy blue sky. This year,

  I am roaming under colourless clouds.

  Last year, I watched the dazzling sun dance gracefully. This year,

  The faint sun moves futurelessly.

  Migration drove me down this bumpy road,

  Where I fell and smelt the soil, where I arose and sensed the cloud.

  Now I am a bird, flying in the breeze,

  Lost over the alien earth.

  Don’t stop and ask me questions.

  Look into my eyes and feel my heart.

  It is bruised, aching and sore.

  My eyes are veiled with onion skin.

  I sit helplessly in an injured nest,

  Not knowing how to fix it.

  And my heart, I’d say

  Is displaced

  Struggling to find its place.

  Shukria Rezaei

  How to Cut a Pomegranate

  ‘Never,’ said my father,

  ‘Never cut a pomegranate

  through the heart. It will weep blood.

  Treat it delicately, with respect.

  ‘Just slit the upper skin across four quarters.

  This is a magic fruit,

  so when you split it open, be prepared

  for the jewels of the world to tumble out,

  more precious than garnets,

  more lustrous than rubies,

  lit as if from inside.

  Each jewel contains a living seed.

  Separate one crystal.

  Hold it up to catch the light.

  Inside is a whole universe.

  No common jewel can give you this.’

  Afterwards, I tried to make necklaces

  of pomegranate seeds.

  The juice spurted out, bright crimson,

  and stained my fingers, then my mouth.

  I didn’t mind. The juice tasted of gardens

  I had never seen, voluptuous

  with myrtle, lemon, jasmine,

  and alive with parrots’ wings.

  The pomegranate reminded me

  that somewhere I had another home.

  Imtiaz Dharker

  Bridge

  Between here and Colombia

  is a pontoon

  of fishnet tights filled tight

  with star fruit and green, salted mango.

  From here to Colombia

  is a pageant

  of carnivals and parties

  and 1 a.m. celebrations and girls

  in homemade wedding dresses

  twirling on their great-great-uncle’s toes.

  Between here and Colombia

  is a green wave

  of parrots tumbling in cages no bigger

  than their beady, red-glass eyes.

  From here to Colombia

  is a necklace

  of gourds frothing

  with brown nameless soups and fried />
  everything and big bottom ants and

  sauces from everywhere and roadkill armadillo.

  Between here and Colombia

  is a zip line

  of stretched elastic marriages

  to high school boy friends.

  Between here and Colombia

  are stepping stones

  of thousands of lost relatives weaving

  down hot pavements dangerous with carts

  ready to pinch your cheeks and say

  You are too thin, what have you been doing?

  And I will set out to travel

  from here to Colombia

  I shall step out

  onto the stretched-tight washing line

  which links our houses

  and wobble on to

  the telephone wires

  which dangle in the mango trees.

  I will ignore the calls

  from great-aunts and great-grandmas

  great-cousins and first cousins,

  and hold out the corners of my dancing skirt.

  I shall point my jelly sandals

  towards the Colombian sun

  and dance cumbia, cumbia –

  until I get there.

  Aisha Borja

  I Am My Own Parent

  I love my red shoes

  all of the shoes I have loved,

  they are.

  I swing my legs against the wall,

  scuffing them slightly.

  My dad is not here to pick them up

  by the scruffs of their dirty necks

  and leave them shining in the morning.

  And now, the arc of my swing

  is not quite so high,

  the shoes every day a little duller.

  At night I leave them in the hall like hope.

  In the morning,

  absentmindedly dreaming of old loves

  and reading poetry until it hurts.

  I spring suddenly out of bed

  and decide to roll up my life into a fist,

  smelling of patchouli and roses, and then

  unroll it. And to my surprise,

  it becomes a snail’s yellow shell, unravelling,

  On and on it goes. It’s gorgeous.

  I tap tap my red shoes

  to find I’m already home.

  Deborah Alma

  Huge Blue

  (For Jack)

  You were three when we moved north,

  near the sea. That first time

  you took one look, twisted off your clothes

  till, bare as the day you were born,

  you made off: I had to sprint,

  scoop you up just as you threw the whole of you

  into its huge blue – or you might be swimming still,

  half way to Murmansk, that port you always dreamed of seeing:

  I once flew, about your age:

  strong arms held me hard,

  hauled me down so my salted eyelashes

  stuck together, sucked blue dark:

  I didn’t know how to remember

  until you opened your arms that day,

  sure that the world would hold you

  and it did: grown now, and half a world away,

  I hope your huge blue

  is beautiful with stars

  as you leap, eyes wide open,

  no ghost of me on your back.

  Pippa Little

  Song

  A scholar first my love implored,

  And then an empty titled lord;

  The pedant talked in lofty strains;

  Alas! his lordship wanted brains:

  I listened not to one or t’ other,

  But straight referred them to my mother.

  A poet next my love assailed,

  A lawyer hoped to have prevailed;

  The bard too much approved himself;

  The lawyer thirsted after pelf:

  I listened not to one or t’ other,

  But still referred them to my mother.

  An officer my heart would storm,

  A miser sought me too, in form,

  But Mars was over-free and bold;

  The miser’s heart was in his gold:

  I listened not to one or t’ other,

  Referring still unto my mother.

  And after them, some twenty more

  Successless were, as those before;

  When Damon, lovely Damon came,

  Our hearts straight felt a mutual flame:

  I vowed I’d have him, and no other,

  Without referring to my mother.

  Lady Dorothea Du Bois

  To My Daughter On Being Separated from Her on Her Marriage

  Dear to my heart as life’s warm stream

  Which animates this mortal clay,

  For thee I court the waking dream,

  And deck with smiles the future day;

  And thus beguile the present pain

  With hopes that we shall meet again.

  Yet, will it be as when the past

  Twined every joy, and care, and thought,

  And o’er our minds one mantle cast

  Of kind affections finely wrought?

  Ah no! the groundless hope were vain,

  For so we ne’er can meet again!

  May he who claims thy tender heart

  Deserve its love, as I have done!

  For, kind and gentle as thou art,

  If so beloved, thou art fairly won.

  Bright may the sacred torch remain,

  And cheer thee till we meet again!

  Anne Hunter

  Flight Radar

  From the top of the Shard the view unfolds

  down the Thames to the sea, the city laid

  by a trick of sight vertically in front of me.

  At London Bridge Station, trains slide in

  and out in a long slow dance. It is not

  by chance that I am here, not looking down

  but up to where you are on Flight 199,

  coming in to land. I have learned to track you

  on my mobile phone. However far you go,

  I have the app that uses the radar to trace

  your path. There you are now, circling down

  around this spire where I stand, my face reflected

  over your pulse in the glass. You cannot see.

  You have no radar for me, no app to make you

  look back or down to where I am lifting my hand.

  Darling, I will track your flight till it is a dot

  that turns and banks and falls out of sight, looking

  into the space where you were. Fingers frozen

  on the tiny keys, I will stay where I am

  in the dying light, the screen still live in my palm.

  Imtiaz Dharker

  Heirloom

  She gave me childhood’s flowers,

  Heather and wild thyme,

  Eyebright and tormentil,

  Lichen’s mealy cup,

  Dry on wind-scored stone,

  The corbies on the rock,

  The rowan by the burn.

  Sea marcels a child beheld

  Out in the fisherman’s boat,

  Fringed pulsing violet

  Medusa, sea-gooseberries,

  Starfish on the sea-floor,

  Cowries and rainbow-shells

  From pools on a rocky shore.

  Gave me her memories,

  But kept her last treasure:

  ‘When I was a lass’, she said,

  ‘Sitting among the heather,

  ‘Suddenly I saw

  ‘That all the moor was alive!

  ‘I have told no one before.’

  That was my mother’s tale.

  Seventy years had gone

  Since she saw the living skein

  Of which the world is woven,

  And having seen, knew all;

  Through long indifferent years

  Treasuring the priceless pearl.

  Kathleen Raine

/>   Mali

  Three years ago to the hour, the day she was born,

  that unmistakeable brim and tug of the tide

  I’d thought was over. I drove

  the twenty miles of summer lanes,

  my daughter cursing Sunday cars,

  and the lazy swish of a daily herd

  rocking so slowly home.

  Something in the event,

  late summer heat overspilling into harvest,

  apples reddening on heavy trees,

  the lanes sweet with brambles

  and our fingers purple,

  then the child coming easy,

  too soon, in the wrong place,

  things seasonal and out of season

  towed home a harvest moon.

  My daughter’s daughter

  a day old under an umbrella on the beach,

  Latecomer at summer’s festival,

  and I’m hooked again, life sentenced.

  Even the sea could not draw me from her.

  This year I bake her a cake like our house,

  and old trees blossom

  with balloons and streamers.

  We celebrate her with a cup

  of cold blue ocean,

  candles at twilight, and three drops of,

  probably, last blood.

  Gillian Clarke

  The Pale Horse

  At twilight she is still sitting with the book in her hand,

  staring through the window, looking for snow.

  Have you seen my horse? she says, eyes wild

  with loss. I smile, brush her hair. She purrs.

  She cups my face. I know you, she whispers,

  have you stolen my horse? I cover her hands with mine

  and we stare a while, nose to nose. I know you.

  Her lips twitch, try to find the forgotten shape

  of my name. I tell her, but she shrugs and turns

  to the window, expecting snow.

  Lesley Ingram

  On Forgetting That I Am a Tree

  A poem in which I am growing.

  A poem in which I am a tree,

  And I am both appreciated and undervalued.

  A poem in which I fear I did not dig into the past,