Poems
SUsan
TaYLOr
News
Books
Poems
Performances
Workshops
Projects
CV
Links
Archive
Milkflower

for Rose Flint

She doesn’t cut a single stalk to bring these bunches to us.
She reads. Her voice calls us inside a wood and we see
her shadow rise up from her body,

tall and separate; suggestion of Persephone
- always moving, sewing snowdrops

among small crowns of leaves,
patch by patch,
within the dark and slippery contract of a kiss.

Rose, go on
weaving the wet path.

I take from you this poem
for the time of year my farmer-mother calls the Quarter Day
of Candlemas, when spring begins.

My mother loves the way the evening moves, extending
light, as February comes

where once she watched her daughter walk
on her shadow and the snowdrops bend

and multiply
chill pale bells.


This well -travelled tree (!) has appeared  in
Poems in the Waiting Room
         &
Moor poets  I
            &
the suspension of the moon
            &
OVERSTEPS POETRY CALENDAR 09
&
Poetry corner
Daily mirror may 2010
After breakfast, nothing of it’s left


She wakes and sees the sky is moving. It snows and she looks upwards where snow’s coming from - hypnotic dimensions in a bounty, bound over, out of childhood. No more is made of morning than a slow determination to wonder, as all her memories of colour fall into a green lake. Sky descends in veils, on and on. More remarkable than falling stars in flight, these are spars snapped off from some high haven. Here in Newton Park, they make soft cradles in crooks of branches – rare nests of whispers. Air becomes a whisking bowl.

The open window breathes out words and breathes in snow – small, wet pockmarks on a page. Before breakfast, she’s tasting clouds by sticking her tongue into the air.


 
published in Sparks Anthology  Sulis Press

   The Tree Warden Mistook me for a Willow


   I had been reading in church;
   not the Bible but a poem
    about Devon’s favourite wizard
   and what he did for the washerwomen
    of old Plymouth town.

   I looked down, surprised to find
   I was tapping my foot at the top of the aisle
   on a burial stone. A man’s
   name was driven into the slate
   like natural curls in arcs of greenery.

   When I had finished, a lady,
   who looked like a Church Warden, told me
   that she was a Tree Warden.
   She thanked me, then apologised for the intrusion,
    but said that while she watched me reading,

   she clearly saw me as willow in sunlight.
   “Disregard the implication of grief,”
     she said.
   “Consider this – a wand of willow
   will grow when you plant it in water.”

P¦ems

 

A list of poems placed recently:

 

Expectant, Transfusion & Sheepwash in Snap, Templar Poetry 2010

 

Implements of Song in C. A. Duffy’s Daily Mirror Poetry Corner

 

Tributary to Dart  accepted for Stand

and also gained second place in Devon Wildlife Trust/Ways With Words Poetry Competition 2008, ‘Landscape as Muse’.

 

Murmuration gained second place in Exc!Te Poetry Competition 09

 

Chagall’s Cow &World of Warcraft inStripe, Templar anthology 09

 

Breakfast with the Red Admiral  in  Words-Myth 16

Crocuses & Cacophony  as above

 

Titania Wings is now on http://www.blackcatpoems.com

The Tree Warden Mistook Me for a Willow  (as above)

 

Expectant &The Boulder in the Room Moor Poets CD Uncharted

 

Flora  appeared in Acumen  62

 

Herself by Herself  appeared in The Interpreter’s House 39

 

Down River  & Brittle appeared in Obsessed With Pipework 45/6

 

Kitty Jay Speaks appeared in Hidden Histories

 

 

 

 

 

 

Plus a few examples of earlier successes:

Published in THE NORTH

& on www.blackcatpoems.com

... and examples of some poems, which were previously successful