The Maisie Hour
that time when it’s been grey all day as it is so often
but late afternoon the clouds lift like a saucepan lid
and the light is a background for a skien of geese
or a flurry of small birds
held together by a invisible secret
sometimes the sunset is spectacular
as when newspaper, twigs and coal finally catch alight
years since you had an open fire but for so long
it was your routine your nemesis your joy
the chimney sweep came each year
draping the furniture
like a museum of shrouds
I promise to take an hour each day to remember you
by lighting a candle
or reading one of your partially completed diaries
perhaps January or the first part of February
or the late flourish of the autumn holiday
we both know that life isn’t straight forward
everything happens on top of everything else
layering like clouds
a spare minute is a luxury
never mind an hour
now you are everywhere all the time
like sun-rays spotlighting dust
The Other Elm
My twin watched me fall into my afterlife,
collapsing branches, creaking bark, decay.
A thousand beetles scurried then settled,
their world little changed.
After only moments of arboreal time
I was embalmed with black and gold.
I scintillate in sunlight, clash with stormy skies
loom strange on foggy days.
If you could climb inside me
we would transform each other.
I’d tell you about the artist, her persistence
with liquid metals and resin,
I’d show you the scar
where an owl made her nest.
For my own protection
I’m ringed by a green fence
you stretch loving fingertips
towards my phantom canopy.
https://www.friendsofprestonpark.org/the-gilded-elm-unveiled/
Orchard
Too grand a name for this triangle patch, wish-boned between roads. My assigned tree
is called Beth, a sapling pear, with a trunk slimmer than a child’s arm. Needs help to survive the heat and drought of summer. I bring water, from home, a form of worship, pour twice a day down a tube in the sandy earth near the roots.
Blossom comes and goes. Bind-weed, couch grass and rusted-wire grab my ankles. Hollyhocks blaze against a brick wall. Eleven fruits swell on Beth’s nascent branches. I count them night and morning, a mantra. That summer I am new to the city and I can’t read the landscape. When I look beyond the patch over spires and rooftops I mind map more familiar places. But here is the glittering talisman of the sea, and here are my new responsibilities. I am reeled in.
One autumn morning I find empty cans, crushed and scattered, roaches in the grass like grubby daisies, cardboard sleeves from corner shop snacks. Beth’s branches broken, stripped of fruit. I don’t rant. The Orchard is a shared space where foxes and all-comers party. Rain rinses dust from the grass. Beth grows another ring of strength.
Flights, Issue Thirteen, August 2024
Flight of the dragonfly 