poetry pf header

 

 
 
 
 

 

Linda Rose Parkes (      -2022)    
about Linda    back to Linda's Page

last update:
April 2015
 

 

 

home button poets button features button

links button shop button about ppf button email ppf button

 

 

Looping the Yarn                                       We Start Here                             

The Distant Aunt                       Our Father's Genitals

 

    Looping the Yarn

 

                                                          There's a click clack click

                                                             clack , hundreds of years

                                                           away. A woman knitting

                                                             as she wound through the lanes

 

                                                           hurrying to finish a pair

                                                              of Jersey hose

                                                           in time for the next

                                                              Southampton shipment.

 

                                                           Part of her had worked itself

                                                             in as she plied the yarn:

                                                           grainy heat from her palms,

                                                              spores of hair, the underlying

 

                                                           percussion of her heartbeat

                                                             seeped into the raw fibre

                                                            with salt-blue particles

                                                             of the thrumming tide.

 

                  As the hose were eased

                     onto Queen Mary's feet

                       softly past the cleft

                         of her ankles

 

                  a murmur of sheep

                     strayed through the window

                       from flocks grazing

                         on the banks of the Nene.

 

                  And the hills unravelling

                     frost and steep

                       shadows broken

                         by luminous spills

 

                  of green breathed

                     the light of the dawn

                       the hour the stitches

                         were cast on.

 

                  And the wind which shook

                     the tips of the grasses

                       flickered the walls

                         of the castle keep

 

                  was the wind fomenting

                     the mouth of the estuary

                       billowing the sails

                         of laden ships.

 

                  As the hose were unfurled

                     over Mary's calves, gently, gently

                       up her wan thighs, and then fixed

                         with a payre of greene silke garters

 

                  and as she leaned her neck

                     across the block and

                       blood splashed her white hose

                         filled her shoes of Spanishe leather

 

                                                            there was the click

                                                             of a stranger hundreds of miles

                                                           away, looping the yarn over

                                                              and under. Clack.

 

 

Linda Rose Parkes

published in collection The Usher's Torch, 2005
ISBN No. 1 870841  98 0

top

We Start Here

 

I love the way your chest hollows under your dressing-gown;

the hair like grass on still dunes.

 

How when you look at me there's a dance brewing

as if Ry Cooder's on the terrace in a white suit and black shirt.

 

That time I slipped on the wet tiles - you came running,

your heart on the verge of a kaleidoscope storm … But what if

 

I asked you, three times a day, to shake off sloth, plump up the interior, roll back the  

carpet to the hills, to the river's hidden currents?

 

Or if I said put your hand on the beginning of the world

and I'll put mine on the seat of contradictions

 

when you're drinking coffee from your yellow cup? Your cigarette

papers on the cloth, your red lighter, behind you a vase of white lilies.

 

Little by little and all at once, we fold back the skin,

show how to travel.

 

If I could say here and here and here is where your tongue

should hover, your thoughts glide to the edge

 

as if we were star gazing, as if we were trying to judge

the distance of a leap

 

between planets …

a good place to start would be the table,

                                               with the cups, the lilies.

   

Linda Rose Parkes

previously published in anthology TheCompany of Poets, 2003
ISBN No. 1 870841  89 1

top

 

 

The Distant Aunt

 

 

         She’ll ride in from the Ice Mountains,

mists dragging her rough cloth

where she's concealed a purse of coals

to trade for whisky, a tot of milk.

Steam still rising off her pony,

I'll smooth clean sheets for her,

shake out a duvet.

 

There'll be hammering across the street,

voices and music from a radio

as she stands in the middle of the room

and we converse with signs.

A gesture comes to mean

the laundry, bitter herbs,

desire for chestnuts.  

 

Not everything will be easy:

her toilet habits, her neglecting

to flush; the way she messes up

the towels, shares my jewellery -

and when friends drop in

makes such complicated drinks

(as if it were they who'd trekked miles across snow plains)…

 

Some days I'll miss the instant foods,

the shelf life of a few minutes;

hours carefully cordoned off

with a rush in between

which keeps things moving.

She has no signs for tired or late.

We wake in a loose expanse of trust,

 

 

studded with light and sudden

winds which blast the roof

or spread the pollen.

I start a thought and keep crossing

back for a set of instructions,

a dropped notebook: as if I was

charting a lost self

 

 

Linda Rose Parkes

joint second in the Keats Shelley Memorial Association competition, 2002

top

 

 

Our Father's Genitals

 

 

Two china geese on the tiled wall

flying to somewhere like far off Ottawa

or one of the Great Lakes of skittering

reeds where a hand would pass like shade

over the surface. A good sort of hand

for ruffling a wing, like the hand of our

father in gentler mood, plenty of hot water

and a glass of sherry. Him lying there,

soothed inside himself; the pine’s silt

needles scratching the window.

My sister and me perched on the bath,

stealing glances. Such a pale sort

of thing, full of secrets.

Surely it wanted to tell us something

in a voice that was beckoning

under the water with whispers around it.

I imagined a wily song, an ocean

of living things, pulled by currents,

remembering tides.

To think it had held one half of us

suspended like geese in mid-flight;

we might never have arrived in our blue

feathers: imagine us frozen there -

the place of shadows we had to cross

to be scooped up, wrapped in our mother.

Tentacle, sacks and limpid spine,

water lapping the rough hairs.

 

 

Linda Rose Parkes

winner in the Blue Nose Poet of the Year , 2001

top

 


© of all poems featured on this site remains with the poet
site feedback welcome