Meltwater

My time is coming, smell it on the wind
watch raindrops winnowing down glass
 
touch ice-cube to your lips and tongue
feel the cool chemistry of meltwater
 
see me submerge fields and swallow crops
spill out of wells to infiltrate your graves
 
raising the dead; firm ground will swamp
to ooze and squelch and slip, mud-symphony
 
hear gurgles, trickles, runnels in your sleep
reach for the drifting flotsam of your dreams
 
sweep river-sludge and sewage from the rug
swell my boundaries with your salt tears;
 
heave seas, wide breaths to rear up hills
waves come to claim their lost inheritance
 
listen to the future: rain-rocked, lake-like
nothing divides the waters from the waters.
 

Maggie Butt

in collections Wish – new and selected poems, 2025,
Greenwich Exchange, ISBN 978-1-9109968-5-0;
and Degrees of Twilight, 2015, The London Magazine Editions, ISBN 978-0-9926061-5-2

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Time Travellers

The sick are well, dead smiling, old are young,
framed photos bloom on windowsills and walls,
I am a baby, arms aloft to be picked up
time zig-zags like a running man avoiding bullets.
 
Framed photos bloom on windowsills and walls
I am veiled bride, gowned graduate, new mum,
time zig-zags like a running man avoiding bullets
listen to the silence of our laughter.
 
I am veiled bride, gowned graduate, new mum,
we are in Venice with our grown-up daughters
listen to the silence of our laughter
I am a girl, in cotton frock with poodle-print,
 
we are in Venice with our grown-up daughters,
three straw-haired nieces squint into the sun,
I am a girl, in cotton frock with poodle-print.
Faces unwrinkle, hair turns luxuriant and brown
 
three straw-haired nieces squint into the sun,
a bunch of snowdrops, roses, autumn leaves.
Faces unwrinkle, hair turns luxuriant and brown
he’s in a de-mob suit, leaving the war behind,
 
a bunch of snowdrops, roses, autumn leaves.
Mum is a red-cross nurse, dad like a movie star
he’s in a de-mob suit, leaving the war behind
futures latent as a roll of undeveloped film.
 
Mum is a red-cross nurse, dad like a movie star
I am a baby, arms aloft to be picked up
futures latent as a roll of undeveloped film,
the sick are well, dead smiling, old are young.
 

Maggie Butt

in collections Wish – new and selected poems, 2025,
Greenwich Exchange, ISBN 978-1-9109968-5-0;
and Degrees of Twilight, 2015, The London Magazine Editions, ISBN 978-0-9926061-5-2

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Torn

someone
someone took your life
your life and tore it down the middle
down the middle then crossways into smaller
smaller pieces as if it was a letter
a letter from an unfaithful lover
pieces flying to the wind.
 
So now you know that the gods, the fates
the fates, the gods
care less for you than a scrap of paper
a scrap of paper.
 
And though you run about
run about and catch them all
all blowing and raining about you
like ticker-tape
tickertape
you can’t see how
how you could begin
begin to stick them together
stick them together
to make a life again.
 
So you tuck them carefully
carefully into your pocket and walk
and walk
and walk.
 

Maggie Butt

in collectionWish – new and selected poems, 2025,
Greenwich Exchange, ISBN 978-1-9109968-5-0

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Skin

The trees have come back from the dead
each year of my life, and my amazing skin
which keeps out wet, and keeps in body parts,
and sings the touch of yours, has regenerated
eight hundred times, each renewal loosening
just a micron, losing a little of the taut brightness
of yours, like a photocopy of a photocopy,
the definition and colour fading away.
 
You might inherit my crinkles and sags,
as I did from my mother, age spots like puddles
of cold tea from my grandmother. It may not be
the inheritance you’d choose. I wish I could bequeath
you skin that’s armoured like a rhinoceros
or armadillo, against a world where I won’t be here
to run to, to bury your face in my chest, to shield
you against the rising waters of that too-imaginable
future. I wrap you in love – stronger than spider-web,
silk, dyneema; tougher than diamonds, kevlar,
tungsten; long-lasting as uranium, thorium, light.
 

Maggie Butt

in collectionWish – new and selected poems, 2025,
Greenwich Exchange, ISBN 978-1-9109968-5-0

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