Poems

SUsan
TaYLOr

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.

published in
Poetry Review
Summer 2006

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