A rainbow pours
it’s perfect spectrum
into sighing woods
beyond the edge of the garden.
And joy climbs upwards
from my toes.
Neon arc rebuffs engulfing grey
though it’s lit patch of blue
was swallowed long minutes ago.
Physics alone
is behind this light show;
but this shining half-circle
still makes me feel whole.
You’re my lighthouse- aflame over my dark seas inside.
The wind in the sand-rooted pines whispers for you
And I yearn. Like their branches for the sky.
Polly Oliver~2017
They jump into your chaos
Unperturbed
By the dense mesh your cage
Of invisible barbs presents;
Built through years of to and fro,
Up and down against
The same cold fence.
Pushed on again
And always again
By that needle voice
Shaped of myelin and synapse,
Amplified by experience
On repeat.
‘Walkies!’ it cries and back you went,
Pavlovian, obedient,
To dangled collar and lead
Gathering more spurs to weave
Your own briar thicket.
No faerie curse is here princess,
You’re your own cruel gaoler,
Architect of mess.
But they come on crooked wings-
Tattered feathers stained
By blood and wine and pain-
Stronger for beating against
The rules they give the bird to.
Battle-drunk they come, striding through
The tangles in which princes flounder.
And laughter, the defiant screech
Of fearsome ravens, furious owls,
Fills and warms the dusty halls
Of your imprisoned heart.
~Polly Oliver (2017)
The thickened fury of their row still clung
in patches to the skirts of the house;
Scorch-smelling clumps that made it slump
and sag between spruce, clean-gabled neighbours.
The afternoon hummed with heat. Her head buzzed
with the residue of frustrated tears:
The sting at the tail end of love.
Clustering clouds closed the blue-arcing window
to space, and under the pressure-cooker sky
the buzzing grew. It’s source no longer inside
her skull but pestering round the back door.
And helicoptering low to the leathered mouth
of a cobwebby, season-weathered boot-
her obscene abdomen a tiger-striped teardrop
dripping pheromones- the queen could be seen!
Primed by Nature’s alarm colour-scheme,
the yellow and black stung her out of ennui
into a warrior- like domesticity.
Too close to the house! We must get them out!
Wide-eyed guard to the door of their den,
she watched keen as a meerkat as he flung
the shabby old shoe with its small, balled colony
to the distant margins of the garden.
For a time a few workers who missed the eviction
searched confusedly the vicinity of home;
disorientated by disaster unwitnessed.
Permanently adrift from the vanished.
They watched the display of displacement play out
In the curl-stomached silence of the culpable.
And the age-trodden boot lay for weeks in the weeds
With its papery clutch of tiny empty rooms.
~Polly Oliver (2017)
This poem was written by my friend and seriously talented poet Amanda Needham. Her work resonates with myth and magic shot through with the visceral and bloody. Emotion seethes, past, present, real and imagined churn. I would love her to publish a collection. Hope you enjoy this little insight.
Polly x
They always told me I was a harbinger.
Vikings would quake at the sight of me
with my nine-foot wingspan
and storm clouds that followed on my feathered gown.
Your name was false (King of the Oyster Thieves)
and when the sky darkened we came clean.
It was me you begged with hands full of sea grass,
to build you a shelter. Sea oak is not suitable
to bear the load of our home,
the selkies could then take us in the night,
tearing down our wall with their heavily-boned fins.
Or me, with my talons may wake
to find you a mess of blood and seaweed-
wings so sharp they may cut out your heart
and flood our house.
Do not love me, I don’t protect anything.
I only bring bad tidings
(on the tide).
I’ll just take flight and reign down
while you on your barnacle throne
can safely surface so often,
and welcome the storm.
~Amanda Needham 2017
Snap, crackle, pop.
Little white pill comes round and ready
Like a new day
From its crisp plastic cell.
Nestles in the valleys and folds
Of my unsteady palm,
Snow-white, morning-bright,
And detergent-clean- so to work
Neutralising the smudges
On a sullied personality
that stays a stubborn grey
Through countless turns of the machine
And spells on the line on sunlit days.
Always the dank dish rag that dulls
The fresh perfection of whites
And pastel brights
Waving in formation to the rhythm
Of a cheery breeze.
I peer into the clear water
And the clean glass
as if to see the future.
Then it’s down the hatch
To where the stones sit in the dark.
~Polly Oliver (2017)
Here the secretive tide laps at banks
Quiet as centuries and wrapped
In twisted mesh of ancient oak limbs;
Twig fingers scraping molecule-thin skin
Of the cool green-blue world that slides
In primal silence below a mirrored sky.
And here in a spring in slackened time
A thousand golden eyes of celandine
Watch impassive the woman who dreams
In bluebell-hazed shade of heart-break green
Of youth and love and the roll of years
That turned a girl’s sunlight to shade and tears.
~Polly Oliver (2017)
