Nature Cure published in The Interpreter's House Autumn 2015

This poem was written very spontaneously from the simple prompt of 'neglect' as a theme. I've long been interested in the fine line between freedom and neglect in the context of childhood, as well as in the sense of the natural environment as being innately nurturing.

Nature Cure

Neglect your child. Set her free to find home

in bogs brash with marigolds, cuckoo flowers,

harebells in heather.

She’ll dawdle the braes peeling rushes,

find green valleys tender,

dream alone by a loch on Bin Mountain. 

Lay no tables. She’ll know

to slip a hand under the maran’s downy breast

for warm eggs; learn to make fire,

build shelters in hollows of bracken

- she’d rather watch fine rain fall

than feel the cold stove.

Or she’ll slink to cottages

where embers wink

under black-bellied pots of purties:

a sprinkle of salt, a cup of blue milk

with a wrinkle of cream from the churn.

A curl of new kittens to hold. 

She’ll mount an old donkey with fostered boys

split skin in a fall, let them laugh,

spit on grazed hands.

When navy serge stiffens with first blood

she’ll know the stale smell of herself - her shame

and knuckles blistered scrubbing stains.

But alone she’ll find her own wild cries,

hidden in hay bales and on branches rising

to open skies. She never was yours.

She’ll hitch-hike to Istanbul

sleep under new arrangements of stars

with the half moon lying back.

She’ll not know where a day 

will put her down, may learn to trust

the mysterious kindness of strangers.

Endangered: published in The North 2015

Endangered was written by a swimming pool on the outskirts of Dar es Salaam on our trip to Tanzania in 2014

Endangered

a pretty slip of a thing

purest green serpentine

slithers past my bare foot

lithe on warm sandstone

to whip up the leg

of the next sun-bed

... in the circumstances

in the situation of the hotel pool

the children playing on the edge ...

though I am also enchanted

and in the lightning moment

think it is the harmless kind

that lives under rafters, not

the green mamba ... but I know

(I still see a thin loop of him now,

in the shade of the mattress)

that I will not lie on a bed

with a slinky young snake beside me, so

with a look to the woman serving drinks,

I betray him. The Masai!

she shrills, as her tray sways

and steadies, and the Masai guard

is here with nagual speed, dapper 

in red wraps, bone anklets, machete erect.

I won't look to where excited children gather

around the limp thing in his hand.