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.