So Hen lays something

small and creamy perfect

as the sun’s slinging ellipse

certain as the shine of straw.

A Sistine hand collects, connects.

Sheltered by a green hedge,

Hen does not know the cosmic

supermarket stack of graded eggs –

free range, half range or barn –

does not know ballads

or builders breaking fields

or bald men cracking atoms.

She knows this egg,

this eye, this moon

and sea is the start

and stop of it all.

Sad we aren’t cluckmates anymore.

I hear that sickle tongue uproar.

Focused, she fasts on a lonely bed,

A tam’o shanter for five bald heads.

I see her steal my pearls, heel straw,

A miser swathing her fragile store.

Her eyes are deep wells. She needs

The alchemy of cracking seeds

To dandelion clocks. Tipped off the nest,

Today, she frets. Manster may know best,

But how she wails at the water bowl,

Twitching, scrambled, losing control.

When the seedlings have dispersed

We will play wormchew, spiderburst

And combwing, or perhaps it will be

My phase of the shellwarm lunacy.

I may have ended in these flower beds,

But I was farmyard born, grit-gut, half-bred,

Had seven broods and wore the crown,

‘Til Chauntecleer cropped up. I did stand down,

But never let him fully have his way.

I plucked along to his upstart assay.

A trochee – claws in – then a cretic,

Four crochets and a semibreve – pathetic,

And Mr Narcissus crowed on and on,

His scaly legs lit by the morning sun.

My theory is that’s why he’s now deceased,

But call me less a widow, more released.

This rooster crooning is a piece of cake.

Too much, of course, may make my red neck ache.

A few bars will suffice to pave my way,

A touch of primal scream to crack the day,

When hens are cocks and cocks are plucky hens

In a mixed up, shook up world of nearly men.

Lay lay lady crowla.

I wanted sitting ducks, dust-bathing.

My hands raked the air, erring.

Half-ruffled hens shook, shocked,

fled to shade, distressed, distrusting.

Watching, father said take time, tame.

Let the twitching hens come, calm.

Gently fold feather-fingers

to clasp pulsing bodies, buddies.

Now writing, I scribble, scrabble

to catch flighty thoughts, fight

to hold on. They elude, evade,

crouch in hedges aggrieved, afraid.

Envoi

Father’s echo comforts, confirms

not to chase chickens; luck follows fallow

times, melts on the mind, mine,

here to stay, not scared, stroked,

hatching memories that hold him close.

You can taste defiance

in her voice

like the bitter tang of Seville

zest. Screaming,

‘I’m pale strawberry!’

Fierce barbs have echoed

down the years

resisting casual comments

that suggest ginger,

not Titian red like

Pre-Raphaelite muses.

Wide gooseberry grey pupils,

like the texture of heelscrape

on sphagnum  covered stones,

freezes them out.

Though she tries

to bleach the ginger,

the stray ends persist.

Not even dyed eyebrows

truly conceal, nor the bronzing

cream on cheeks and neck.

The ginger underlayers,

like a soft feline belly,

whisper down her nape.

Music rides over,
Air in this room,
It speaks to say,
It’ll be over soon.

A temporary feeling,
Sad, hollow days,
Will go quite soon,
Begin a new phase.

You’ll find a place,
Glue all the pieces,
Smile once again,
Rich as creases.

Soon home will be,
Beside him where,
I know I belong,
Just lying there.

Warm with love,
Bathed in light,
Glowing with heat,
In the dark of night.

Until that day,
I’ll rest in wait,
Time and destiny,
Space and fate.

Gaping walnut shells

gleaned from harrowed earth.

Rounded flint stones rolled by rain and wind.

A partial shell ear

encrusted spirals

and the tracery of a wintered maple leaf.

A rusted bobbin

a kitten’s lost toy,

a tiny green origami bird,

weathered glass fragments

a single earring

and a pair of blue plastic action man bootees.

Along with a jay’s

shimmering cobalt

feather, these random oddments

my found storybook

compartmented. Some

found at the edge of fields or freshly dug black soil

where marbles glint low,

as fingers scrub off

long years of weed-blocked obscurity,

and brittle oyster

shells reveal a past;

this fertile blackness once the host of ancient seas.

Tacitly
the water retreated,
slipping through
the scars of the Earth
unapologetically,
scorning and scorching
ingratitude
with arid winds.

The horizon curled
and rippled,
teasing our search
for clouds; I flicked
a bead of blood
from my lips,
fissured
and riven, like
the salt flats,
which glimmered,
alluringly, with
deadly, mineral snow.

It’s that time when you may find me grim.

When absent leaves will render branches bare

and sodden pigeons seek forlorn retreat.

Only a lonely troubadour thrush sings.

You see me hunched against the morning chill

as condensation dribbles down, I make

a sideways swipe to foil the downward run

as gentle room heat slowly ghosts all trace.

You stand behind me though I do not hear,

your whispers stray as memory wanders past.

You know I seek to find the long lost thread,

touch me once more that I may feel your warmth,

then, as my towelled hand wipes the glass, I think

I catch a glimpse, so faint – you leave again.