The Hillside

A bone-dry devil-of-an-easterly whistles
off the Howgills, sneaks under planked doors
leaches every blade and muscle
bending into rows of winter fodder.
     They call it the Helm wind.
 
It made for thin shelter on this slope
when the last son and his wife worked the farm.
Less snigging to be done – to carry into their oil-lit room
fumed with fresh hawthorn and steaming oats
     stirred on the iron range
 
that never went out to let bad luck in.
When she heard his distant hollering
and bracken whisper as the dog circled high intakes,
she knew he was watching sun spread the bay
     with a silver cloth and set her table
 
and waited for the pounding grey line
of ewes to stream by the pantry window to lower ground,
boot-scrape on stone flags,
his warmth on her neck, before the wind stole it,
     before limed walls sunk to moss and mist moved in.
 

Kerry Darbishire

shortlisted in The Charles Causley Poetry competition, 2016
in collection A Lift of Wings, 2014, Indigo Dreams Publishing,
ISBN 978-1-909357-59-4

 
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Planting Parsley with my Father

Resting on the bench broken by winters
I see not my mother’s cool     pale
rivers-in-moonlight hands
 
flowing through my hair     breezing
around my ears and face each morning
not the hands that could span an octave
 
make the shortest pastry     coax
a sick puppy to health     but my father’s
showing me the worth of green in spring.
 
A robin perches on the warm fork searching
damp earth the way he worked trowels     hands
curved as a ship’s bow     mapped by war
 
channelled by a force ten     hauling me
from night tides     dream-sick     half-drowned
holding me in the air     rescued to a summer’s day
 
with the smell of trenches     heeling in small plants
the way he mended my dolls     twisted back
their arms into sockets     tucked them in beside me.
 

Kerry Darbishire

Runner up in the Poetry Book Society/Mslexia Poetry competition, 2018,
published in Mslexia, Issue 80, Dec/Jan/Feb 2018/19, ISSN 2059-5514

 
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Rare Photos

I’m fifteen, looking back at the fells
their tops smeared by mist.
Dad is facing the lens, salient, reclaiming his prize.
 
I remember that day on the lake,
the pull and slip of oars in wide black water.
Our out-of-depth conversation
 
darted like pike in their dark homes
searching amongst embryonic layers
for each other. I can imagine how he felt
 
in those two hours of hire. I see it now – gold-framed,
his smile as uncertain as the void beneath our feet,
expectation grabbing the stained shore.
 
I’m wearing the silver leaf-brooch he gave me.
His paisley cravat is loosely tied inside a blue shirt –
the one he always wore for best.
 

Kerry Darbishire

in collection A Lift of Wings, 2014, Indigo Dreams Publishing,
ISBN 978-1-909357-59-4

 
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The King in the Park

Bardot, Monroe, that’s who we were
in school lunch breaks down the park.
Each day we crossed forbidden waters
of shocking pink lippy, sleeves and collars rolled,
skirts hitched to thighs, hair beehived –
one comb between four – in the three minutes
it took him to reach us.
 
We’d watch him swagger through the main gates,
a star for real in drainpipes, blue suede creepers, guitar
slung loose over his padded shoulder.
He’d lean against the rusty see-saw
dragging on a cigarette, brown eyes tight
as bedroom curtains. Hazel nearly fainted
watching smoke curl from his lips, kisses
 
ringing the damp air, Love me Tender
slipping off his tongue in an Ambleside-
Southern-Atlantic way. We swooned
breathless, melted into his sickly after shave,
grease-flicked panther-black hair, sharp sideburns
cutting a northern-pale jaw.
He was almost as tall as Elvis.
 

Kerry Darbishire

in collection Distance Sweet on my Tongue, 2018, Indigo Dreams Publishing,
ISBN 978-1-910834-89-3

 
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