From the Rocks at Staffa

as if this weren’t enough
              basalt pillars rearing from the sea
                            a sliding sun spreading jigsaw light on the ocean’s current
 
I can see through marbled depths to the intimate quiet of stones
              and dreaming lion’s mane jellyfish in diaphanous dresses
                            pulsing gently
 
propelled by rust-coloured underskirts
              fine ribbons trailing
                            suspended     light-filled
 
              composed of almost nothing
 

Barbara Hickson

2nd prize in The Plough Prize competition (short poem category) 2017, and published on-line
(see results page for judge’s comments and other winning poems)

 
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An Evening Drive near Chipping

It couldn’t be helped,
     the sudden rabbit dash
from a froth of cow parsley,
     body writhing on tarmac,
hind limbs flailing.
 
We couldn’t leave,
     but standing there,
you with that stone in your hand,
     we couldn’t finish
what we’d started.
 
So we killed by proxy –
     back in the car,
isolated by plushness,
     we hardly felt a thing.
 
A glance in the mirror
     at the still, small heap in the lane,
the crimson sky.
 

Barbara Hickson

published in Contemporary Poetry Series Vol. 1 No. 5, 2017, Corbel Stone Press

 
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November

     When the mist thickens, one walks in a blind world.
     (Nan Shepherd)
 
Evening clings to windows, calling him to shrug
into coat and boots, settle the coals, leave his hearth,
follow sheep-scent, the old-man cough of cattle.
 
He navigates by hidden landmarks: a trickle of water,
stone walls crouching in gloom, trees ghosting
as distance diminishes, fog closing in
 
seeping into his senses so he’s on the brink of knowing
and not knowing –
years gathering behind him like leaves in a corner.
 
Through mist, white noise of a silenced voice –
a bargain struck between man and horse,
the grind of metal on stone, foot and hoof heavy with clay –
 
lives gone from memory but, sometimes, in the margins
of the day, glimpsed briefly, like the owl’s pale wings,
felt in the steady beat of their passing.
 

Barbara Hickson

published in Creative Countryside Issue 5, Autumn 2018, ISSN 2515-5350

 
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Sanderlings

a gang of them      like giddy children
                 scamper along the shore
                                    chasing waves out
being chased back
                 short legs tantivying
                                    black beaks prodding
they pather in shallows
                 interrogate bubbles      searching
                                    for crabs      worms      anything
racing ahead      switching direction
                 nifty as fish
                                    bright as a flurry of snow
 

Barbara Hickson

published in joint collection Rugged Rocks, Running Rascals – poems for complicated times,
DragonSpawn Press, 2019, ISBN 978-1-64467-698-1

 
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