You

are the size of a large strawberry

and around you, I am

world. Quite

literally. My belly is bedrock

and all the night sky.

 

And though you don’t know

the feel of the breeze yet,

I am rain, and all of your weathers.

What light you have

is through my skin.

 

Now you have ears,

I am a country in progress around them. .

In me, strata are formed and exploded.

I am river

and the way all waters move.

 

Soon, you will be the size of a lemon.

And above you, I will be landscape

where factories hum and small towns fume

and votes are cast

for the wrong kind of people.

 

Small fruit, you

are my mineral wealth

and you will not be exploited.

My heart is an industry

that never shuts down.

 

My bad knees are Atlas

supporting the planet, and my hands 

are huge ships

that will carry you, sleeping,

into the night, out

 

into the starlit world.

 

(for Niamh, born 12.12.2007) 

 

About the arguments we had last year

(from ‘Straight Ahead’, Bloodaxe 2006)

 

It would have been so easily ended

back then,

the three hour arguments

that left us shaking,

 

the urgent late night drive,

two other cars on the road

between here and North Yorkshire,

the yellow-grey hedgerows,

 

the sudden open page

of an owl lifting, and all the way

the right words

and none of them good enough.

My chest was a jar full of fishes

that couldn’t get air.

 

Without you, everything fell.

Trees rotted soft; the snow melted

and the paths stank.

Words could not speak themselves,

familiar places did not

know me anymore.

 

That night,

Settle was black with sleep

and empty. There was

a single bleat from the hill.

We lay still in the bed

and your skin was cold.

 

I remember all that

and spend a minute now

imagining

it was over last year and yet

here you are

 

and the moment comes heavy with light

and dripping, your face

close to sleep and smiling.

Our ordinary bed,

the same song playing

 

and you,

a candle behind each eyelid,

a fat apple landed

where it was least expected.

Extraordinary,

 

like a leopard walked in, glowing

from the wet night

on Back Commercial Street,

to lay with me, breaking

 

all known barriers of reason and place

to be with me.

 

The no baby poem

(from “Answering Back, ed. Carol Ann Duffy (2007), Faber)

  

There will be no ceremony

in a quiet wood for this. Today,

the sun does not matter.

You have simply not made it

into existence. All science, all alchemy

have failed from the start.

There is only this

injury, nameless and wet.

 

You are everything I know now

of loss, the perfect

grey weight of it, constant,

which has turned down the light

in my face.

 

Had just one moment

of one month been different,

you would have been born

into winter.

We would have made the drive

in the late afternoon,

past front rooms in Luddenden

yellow with warmth

a jewellery of light in each window

to see you erupt like summer

into our hands.

 

No-show, non-event,

we have lost you

to a world where there is no word,

even for absence. 

Whatever could have made you

is irrelevant. Today,

the slightest breeze could blow me

clean away.

 

 

Bird 

 

(from ‘Straight Ahead’, Bloodaxe 2006)

 

Years ago, when I was young enough

to eat mud and be interested

in stones and clocks and buried bones -

when I was that young,

I found a bird that couldn’t fly.

I picked it up. Its chest was flecked

 

like the surface of a road;

its wing was blackened straw; its eye

was a kind of corridor.

You can ignore the panic of wild things.

They struggle because

they don’t know better.

 

I put it in a box and dug for worms;

uprooted the seedlings my father had grown

all winter in his steamy plastic frames.

They were thin green sinews, fragile as ice.

I broke them, and was shouted at of course,

and only three sore worms

and a damp gum of a slug to show for it.

 

And the bird wouldn’t eat.

The far hole of its eye was misted over

like a sick cat or a

great-great-grandmother.

A distance, comfortless as a spider.

You couldn’t touch or stroke it.

It would sink lower

 

beneath the hollow shoulders

and the eye would echo emptier.

The jamlid of water grew a skin of dust and feathers

and the food crawled and soured.

The bird smelt sick, like bad music.

Like something broken,

a thing done wrong.

 

But one day I woke

and what came from its throat

was a firework of sound that flowered,

that ran like a river

over stones where fish shimmer.

Quick otters swam in the dark of its song.

Clouds bloomed, sky grew suddenly tall

 

and the room was yellow with morning.

It was the third day.

The cardboard was soggy as bread.

The bird was all bones. By noon, it was dead.

What am I trying to say?

Nothing.

It just happened. It just happened like I said.

 

 

 

Poem from a Bus Shelter

(from ‘Straight Ahead’, Bloodaxe 2006)

 

This is not a life, but if it was

I’d say I always lived here.

I’d say this street; this long grey face

of factories, flats; the boarded shops;

the tired, concrete houses, squats –

they saw my first bright day.

 

I was clean as a breeze,

as cold as glass. I sweated rain,

was slicked by the wind, was beautifully bare.

I filled myself with city sound,

the blur and swirl of good blue air.

 

When Winter came, and the gale,

and the church roof flapped and fractured like a wing;

when thin trees fell

and shop fronts swelled and bellied –

I stood my ground.

 

I knew where I belonged.

I was the colour of a dockside warehouse,

blue-grey. The shade of a cold,

an evening cloud, a hangover, a foggy day.

If I had ever had a life

 

I would say that I was proud

and it could be true.

Come rain or snow,

come the long white corridor

of Christmas;

 

come crowds with spiteful corners; come

the wet green growl of winter spit;

come fist; come kick;

come the lurch of stolen cars;

come stone; come brick;

 

come I luv Gaz, Mick,

Shaz; come weekend chips;

come drunken piss; come empty cans;

come the sad pink skins of condoms,

dog shit, sick, come sick –

come morning, I was there.

 

And if I had ever had a life

half worth the privilege of the name –

if I had not been rooted to this spot

and treated to the things

that other lives spit out

 

I would be proud

and I would write it –

I would write it clear and loud

in bold black ink

with my bold black hand

I would write it.

 

I woz ere.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My mum

by Joseph S. Shaw

 

My mum is the blue sky and the blue sea.

She makes me feel happy

like when Donny Osmond sings Joseph.

She’s like chips – she’s soft and fluffy inside.

She’s lemonade - she makes me think of

happy things,

like being on holiday, and baby Jamie.

She’s smooth and cosy like pyjamas,

she makes me warm. 

Like camping in France in North Brittany,

she’s my favourite place.

She’s the thunderstorm at night we all slept through.

She’s the sea, deep, deep and deeper.

She’s my skin.