Concerning

Concerning my garden, it is a bastion of bramble.
Concerning bramble, it is threaded by couch-grass.
Concerning couch-grass, it runs sly as rumour.
Concerning rumour, it travels by satellite and mouths.
Concerning mouths, they thirst and blister.
Concerning blisters, they are coin-sized weapons.
Concerning weapons, they are tools in the game.
Concerning games, there’s the business of keeping score.
Concerning scores, they are measured in bodies.
Concerning bodies, they bleed and they burn.
Concerning burning, it brings char and purging.
Concerning purging, read gardens, bodies, scores.
 

Jennie Osborne

first published in The North;
in collection Signals From the Other, Dempsey and Windle, 2022,
ISBN 978-1-913-32974-7

 
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Psalm

     after John Coltrane ‘A Love Supreme’
 
We mouth them on repeat until
they’re full and empty as mantras,
our Please God and our Alleluia,
I love you and Why me?
The worn-out currency of words
stretched beyond their definitions
by volcanos which possess us,
burst out in uttered lava
that grows cold on blistered lips.
 
We sang before we spoke,
and some rare souls find deeper language,
first offspring of the primal cry.
Tonight, it’s Coltrane’s saxophone
that tells it how it is, how life
goes on under the bruises –
then reaches for the sky to seek
one last and everlasting listener.
Over the rolling grumble
of the world’s drums, it speaks me.
 

Jennie Osborne

in collection Signals From the Other, Dempsey and Windle, 2022,
ISBN 978-1-913-32974-7

 
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The Birds of Valencia

First it’s the goldfinch,
swinging in a cage on the sandstone balcony
in the Carrer Major, calling to the flock,
live flowers flitting up and down the ravine.
 
                    All night the caged birds call her name.
 
Then a parakeet, the yellow of celandines,
in a meshed enclosure on a first-floor terrace,
embroidering his song with wolf-whistles, church bells,
displaying to his own reflection.
 
                    All night the caged birds peck at her thoughts.
 
And then a partridge from a high-walled yard,
her cry a chord of desire and loneliness
luring her suitors from the dry terraces
to face the loud lust of guns.
 
                    All night the caged birds claw
                    at net and chicken-wire,
                    chirp of ladders, wire-cutters, keys
 
                    of the hour between three and four
                    when owls rule and nightingales in the lemon trees
                    mourn the prisoners.
 
                    All night the caged birds scream.
 

Jennie Osborne

in collection Signals From the Other, Dempsey and Windle, 2022,
ISBN 978-1-913-32974-7

 
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Close to the Wind

Young, and not yet grown
into the way of hawk,
three gapes open in not-knowing,
blood-instinct under their tongues,
their yellow claw-fingers grasp air,
itch for rabbit-neck.
 
They have been named in the old language,
as if that charm would keep them
through all odds,
named Ghost, Light, Sky,
to breathe height into their wings,
been braceleted with numbers
to count the days of their passage,
the days of their deaths.
 
And they will be launched forth,
pushed into air as seal into water,
into unarmoured air that offers
no refuge, into the sights
of shotguns
 
the harriers harried, brought low
with lead, leaving their plotted tracks
to those who collect knowledge
 
no legacy to their own kind,
thrust in their turn
into the spring breeze on the Carneddau,
none except an impression
of tail feather dipping into cloud,
an almost-call at the edge of hearing,
 
awyr      golau     ysbryd
sky          light       ghost.
 

Jennie Osborne

in collection Signals From the Other, Dempsey and Windle, 2022,
ISBN 978-1-913-32974-7

 
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