Terroir

Beneath this thin and dusty soil
where I try to coax growth
from straggling seedlings
there is constant welling
and rock.

Water carves rock
but rock binds water
releases springs and falls
wild courses constrained
to river and lake.

Love is sunlit
playful, flooding
but it’s bedrock
that forms terroir –
sustaining, defining
constant in dry seasons.

Joy Howard

in collection Foraging, 2017, Arachne Press

Foraging

The bees are working the cotoneaster.
What are they finding there? the blossom’s gone
small berries green, not yet plumped and reddened
for autumn birds.

The spikes of lavender are grey and upright
but soon there’ll be the purpling up, the swaying
in the wind, the bending with the weight of bees
in a stream of sunlight.

And I shall see you, basking on your bench
loving the busyness: bees in the blooms
me cutting back the shrubbery. You motionless
as a Henry Moore.

Or dancing on the lawn, loving life and the roses –
bright as July till paths defeat you and grass
turns treacherous. So began the bringing of small posies
daily to your door.

The last of these a February one and took some doing
among the wintry shrubs and scrub of moss and leaves
under cold skies. Mourning weather. I laid it with slow care
upon your coffin.

And I’ve still not told the bees.

Joy Howard

in collection Foraging, 2017, Arachne Press

Endgame

A thin wisp of woodsmoke
catches the throat

foxes are barking the dawn in
soon comes a cold sun.

A last day should be gold
and purple with blackberries

but ice claws at the window:
it has begun.

Joy Howard

in collection Foraging, 2017, Arachne Press

Out to Lunch

the way a poet
will pick up the book you hand her
and disappear

in the middle of a conversation
away she goes and you know
you’re talking to yourself

rinsed clean by the immersion
she’ll resume engagement
with the world and you

but something’s changed
her ear’s half listening
tuned to a remote frequency

you could get her to agree
that trip to the Hebrides
she’d hear it as Hesperides

where lunch beneath
the dappled shade
would be golden apples