The Beech

Beneath sapphire summer skies
its canopy shimmered ruby light
each leaf a drop of blood shed
transferred from battle to the sky
 
Now the year is growing slight
the slanting sun catches clustered
leaves; hanging still despite the wind
that snatches, hurls handfuls with
armoured hands to sodden ground.
 
The canopy still shimmers gold,
a kings dinner service set upon
a banquet table of crystal light
green garlanded by evergreens,
 
that will remain when the gold
has fallen to the ground, turned
brown and rotted into mulch, but
still the tree will stand bare-black
 
revealing remnants of the homes,
the nests that nurtured nestlings
wait for winter to depart, spring
return and then again the buds
 
will clothe the canopy, open slowly
as the sun rises higher every day
until the canopy is copper, ruby
lit, a shelter to new life brought
by returning survivors of the flight.
 

Carolyn O’Connell

Published in Angela Topping blog, Hygge Feature 8 Outdoors/Indoors, #, January 2017

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As we Crossed Hungerford Bridge

He would be standing in a curve
sheltered by the walls,
with a fistful of envelopes,
others in a basket at his feet.
 
He offered one to everyone
who crossed, with a wish
that you open the envelope,
read the words he’d written.
 
Each one contained a poem:
sonnet, haiku, elegy, sometimes
a villanelle. He never asked
for payment, just that you read
before rushing away
 
we would always place a coin
among the stack of envelopes
waiting in the hat.
 
I never knew his name, only
that he wanted his words
to wing into the hearts
that crossed the bridge.
 

Carolyn O’Connell

Highly Commended in Poetry Kit Spring Competition 2018

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Not a Station

     Ladbroke Grove four years after the crash
 
It wasn’t a platform it wasn’t October.
For a moment Sainsbury’s car park was deserted
no one came to drive away the waiting cars
shaded by Kensal’s defunct gasometers.
 
Along the perimeter wire rags flick languidly
as wings of perching birds, lifted
by slowly moving currents of a pre-storm heat
before flying on over Trelick Towers.
 
Only the whistle of an unseen train
on the line below the memorial, the wilting flowers,
breaks the stillness as it passes signal SN93
speeding towards Reading or Oxfordshire.
 

Carolyn O’Connell

in collection Timelines, Indigo Dreams, 2014, ISBN 978-1-9093575-3-2;
prev published online by Poetry Society in Yes, I remember Adlestrop, 2014

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The Green Bridge

In the night the wooden bridge
reaches over the river
a green hand clasping bank to bank
over the moonlit water
silver, silent, reflective
the traces of trees shimmer from
flickering frost shrouded bark,
pleading branches arms outstretched
grasp the black sky waiting for dawn.
 
Beneath the bridge branches cradle
the span in a wooden chalice
felled by unknown hands
they shine with memories, light.
 
The bridge is empty now
no trace of walkers trekking to Kingston,
families finding friendship
bikers riding the hidden path.
 
A sound – an owl flies between the leaves
his wings whisper breathing
words flung into the air by those
who passed I catch them
as I stand here.
 

Carolyn O’Connell

in collection Timelines, Indigo Dreams, 2014, ISBN 978-1-9093575-3-2;
previously published at Rhythm & Muse

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