the birdscarer

Like David
I found my weapons on the battlefield,
repelling the invaders of our golden hoard.
They swarmed, and clamouring,
massed for the attack.

Out of nowhere appeared a single form:
swift and true my lonely stone did fly
and fall to the golden field
where the vanquished lay.

And in that instant
I felt feathers brush my fingers
and the beat of a tiny heart in my hands,
 the wind against my face
and my spirit soared,

but then I was just standing in a field of corn,
black with crows
and in my hands
a bundle of black feathers and a broken heart.

This is an old one. We had a school reading book about lives of Victorian children, and one of the stories was about a boy who was a sort of human scarecrow. The idea stuck with me for a long time, and eventually resulted in this.

[North 3] the princess visits the kitchen

There was an open door just past the cabinet. She darted into the room and took a deep breath. On the table just in front of her was a plate piled high with little bread rolls, shiny with glaze. She could smell them - warm and sugary. She reached out a hand to take the top one. As she lifted it off, a figure emerged from an alcove in the corner. Startled, the princess dropped the roll, causing half the pile to tumble off the plate and onto the floor.

'What the...'

The princess ducked underneath the table. Footsteps came nearer.

'Pot boy, if that's you, I'll have your hide...'

cwic/alive

Fierlen aesces forbyrnath
bremels byrst
bearn blithe

Distant ash trees burn
brambles bristle
glad child

Horrendous anglo-saxon grammar here, but I thought any writing was better than nothing, and this idea appealed to me. I've been trying to teach myself anglo-saxon in my spare time, and the words have a fierceness that makes them come alive. Basically I took the words from my vocab list and shuffled them about until things clicked. I tried to nod to anglo-saxon verse conventions by having alliteration.

winter

It was winter. 
Your eyes were closed each time I came.
I'd sit and talk 
not knowing if you heard.
It felt like the same things
over and over again.
I stepped out in the rain with relief 
and guilt and sadness 
scrunched up tight inside me. 

Later, new black dress, new tights, 
new shoes that didn't fit. 
You looked out at me from photos: 
black and white, growing older 
as I cut and pasted. 
You went to war, got married,
had kids. Colour slipped in 
somewhere in the 60s, orange tinted.
You held a smaller, younger me 
as I graduated from frilly bonnets
 to dungarees. 
Sitting by your chair, 
we practiced Morse code by torchlight: 
dot dot dot, dash dash dash, dot dot dot, 
over and over again.
After the funeral, traditional 
tea and sandwiches, talking.
I looked past the chrysanthemums, 
gold and orange
to see snow, softly falling just outside the window.

outsider

Sea-bound, land-locked,
ringed by high cathedral wall.
Journey's end and pilgrims' rest:
Saint Andrew's bones make travellers of us all.
I am a tourist in its streets,
no longer a participant in its daily rites.
That book is closed;
I cannot read its pages.

I have no more substance than the ghosts,
lingering layers of past and present.
A photograph that fades: soft-edged shadows
with a keener sense of loss.
I am a whisper
of conversations, laughter, tears;
essays unwritten, blank pages and troubled sighs.

Other people walk the same lanes home,
drink tea where once I sat and whiled away the hours
with a pile of books.

Its joys and cares do not concern me now:
I don't belong here.

From harbour-head to river-mouth,
I am a stranger to the place I knew so well,
and know it still, but others now, they know it too,
and it is theirs, not mine. For now.

the archaeological rag

(with apologies to Cole Porter)

Times have changed
and we've often rewound the clock
since historians got a shock
when Belzoni smashed some old Egyptian rock.
If today,
any regulations he should try to trim,
'stead of digging up old rocks,
we'd all be digging up him.
In olden days there was more funding,
archaeology was a fun thing,
but now: application denied, case closed-
anything goes!
Good authors who once knew their history,
to them - the past? It's just a mystery.
When money flows...
anything goes!
When gap-year student, age of twenty
wants to dig, there's places plenty
-anything goes!
Those academics with books in hand,
mess up your plans and step on toes
-anything goes!
When the site director is getting richer
-get in the picture!
It doesn't matter if your budget's low
-anything goes!
If sleeping in tents you like
with no gents you like
if cheap food you like
and bad moods you like
if getting sued you like
for taking some goods you liked
-why nobody will oppose!
And though it may sound awful cynical,
as though archaeologists have no principles,
when that deadline's getting close
-anything goes!

(Written at uni for a friend in Classics who was rather sniffy about archaeologists)

childhood

Once summers stretched
long and hot. Beaches
became deserts. Woods
were wild,
dangerous places.

We sat barefoot
on branches.
Trees were to be climbed,
caves explored. Our dens
were everywhere.
Hidden.

Time hung
high and distant
above our heads.
Our imaginary spaces
faded,
leaving only echoes
in the trees and hollow caves.