Shearsman 61

Janet Sutherland

Three Poems


Memory

the little adders fall
out of the pitch-forked hay

into the stooks
floating the swollen river

the past like folded washing
dislocates

the last bus missed
the fifteen mile walk home

a carthorse ridden standing
to a quiet stall

speaking in fragments
still

the lost and agile words
could be a poem

an adder falling
punctuates the peace

 


Seed

we are making a path
collecting stones
flint and old buttons from a dead man's shirt

I have let seed fall
here, the tares and the foxgloves drift in
under cover of darkness

birds shit pips into the cracks, the thorns
of the blackberry
harden, tough

skinned stone breaks
and the buds open

 

Cirrus in bed


I would put
cirrus or
cirrocumulus
to bed
to lay a hair-like filament
across your face

high up a banded linear event
perplexes thought
but wrapped in lace
you open up to touch it with your tongue

 

Copyright © Janet Sutherland, 2004.

Janet Sutherland lives in Lewes. This is her second appearance in Shearsman.

The poem 'Seed' previously appeared in Polyscriptum.