Siskin

an oval     in the hand     this day of creation
brooding with my heart     blood-warm     I wait
in dim light     for the first pin-hole     of birth
 
abandoning shell     flexing feathered wings
each pointy claw     wanting to grasp…
 
       once there was a room     with paper leaves
       oak gall juice    and sharpened quills
       that became her winter home…
 
breathe out    bathe wings     in dry-light
imagine the unheard strokes of flight
 
her rippling     chittering    summer liberty
to slip back on a cool north breeze     rest
on the yellowing birch…
 

Patricia Helen Wooldridge

Published in ARTEMISpoetry, 28, May 2022;
published in collection, Out in the Field, 2023, Cinnamon Press,
ISBN 978-1-7886414-2-5

back to top

 

Lunar

I’m having one of my daisies –
hopscotch, throw and jump,
dive off the edge of a skullcap moon.
 
I can see what’s coming in the anteroom –
are you the lady that wants to be
in the glasshouse?
 
Does she know about the telescope
in my ceiling? How all day the moon
crouches in the corner and I repeat:
 
I will not store my voice in a vase on the moon.
 
Did she catch me stealing the sea
shut tight in a tin with its crumble of rocks –
my beach on a dresser?
 
Open the lid and surf boils, shivers loose
on a wind-whip, flaking against my legs
and the land dissolves overnight on a tongue of sea.
 

Patricia Helen Wooldridge

First Prize, Kent and Sussex Open Poetry Competition, 2016;
published in collection, Sea Poetics, 2018, Cinnamon Press,
ISBN 978-1-78864-022-0

back to top

 

The Jar of Sleep

Inside the jar of sleep
I am clambering up like a wasp.
 
          *
I could be rocking
back and forward,
 
the sun smudged in fuchsia
on a patch of ice blue,
 
morning melts
in a burning net of cloud,
 
dragging me somewhere
out on the heath
 
where silver birches flex
their split ends against the cold.
 
          *
Strung filaments and cirrus trails
gather round this day of skirts –
 
a red and yellow sun dog –
it feels like rain.
 
I persist in an afternoon –
a sky that needs walking into.
 
          *
With a thousand plus
strobes of blue
 
teasing the lake
in a damsel heat-wave,
 
one lights on a green blade –
its azure back, electric, static,
 
wings apparently
wired through tissue
 
like a webbed angel.
 

Patricia Helen Wooldridge

Fourth Prize, Rialto/RSPB Poetry Competition 2015;
published in Rialto 83 Summer 2015;
published in collection, Sea Poetics, 2018, Cinnamon Press,
ISBN 978-1-78864-022-0

back to top

 

I Stop Wearing the Mini-skirt, 1972

I listen to Jimi Hendrix, Foxy Lady, in the dark, drink milk
in chilled cartons on Victoria Station. Beyond the factory
hours of vacation working, I don’t know what I’ll do.
 
The two of us deep in the forest, summer
under two-man canvas, the tearing rasp of cows
at night and will they see the guy ropes?
 
I don’t know if I want a baby.
 
I review my life:
I love The Nutcracker Suite, being at the ballet –
my neighbour’s treat – still dreaming the dancer.
 
Does my English teacher want her poetry books back?
Twenty more years before I know she told them
I’d be a writer.
 
How will I survive being away from you, behind the door
of this university room?
You hitch-hike all the way to see me.
 
They would have loved a proper wedding – dad
to give me away, mum fussing round the bridal gown,
petting the grandchildren already born.
 
I stop wearing the mini-skirt.
I don’t know that I do love you is not forever.
I read Rachel Carson and believe the sea is dying.
 

Patricia Helen Wooldridge

Commended National Poetry Competition 2013;
published 2014 – The Poetry Society (poetrysociety.org.uk);
published in collection, Sea Poetics, 2018, Cinnamon Press,
ISBN 978-1-78864-022-0

back to top