Moon’s Yard

Low tide: love’s wrack and ship’s ruin
where green is the colour of treachery.
 
Nowhere in these narrow islands
as alien – or enticing –
as this crab-happy place
between rock and difficult sea.
 
For there’s a well of wonders here:
the fronds and orifice of the sea-anemone
that tenacious pyramid, the limpet
claw of cantankerous lobster
and sculpted pools, as clear as music.
 
Be bold enough to hold your station
by remorseless waters,
the waves insistent
on the heart’s tide’s turning.
 
A sojourn in a dripping cave
may bestow its token:
a charm or shell
to carry home
courtesy of the moon.
 

R. Rushforth Morley

published in Orbis, 120

 
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The Masque

Nothing is what it wants to be
but straining
straining against the masque that governs this gifted world.
 
The stones on the riverbed are not what they want to be
but dreaming
dreaming the delicacy of dace
quivering imaginary fins
in their clod solid sleep.
 
This good woman with her perfect beauty is not what she wants to be
nor that sleek entrepreneur behind the wheel of his Merc.
 
Neither are the tree-tittering starlings what they want to be –
for in the gap between their notes there is a loneliness
where each longs for eagle-deeds which none dares to confess.
 
The priest and the butcher are not what they want to be –
for the butcher dwells in a tender garden
as he cleaves red meat from the bone,
while the priest would leave his boots upon the altar
to dance barefoot down the lane.
 
And if you, my love, declare
that you are not where you want to be
but need to leave this narrow bed we share,
must I put by my only certainty
and with the carnival world concur?
 

R. Rushforth Morley

published in Envoi, 134

 
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Christmas Spirit

Tinselberry bruised his credentials
and got out quick –
 
               My sisters are convinced of a March nativity
               and pray upon their backs.
 
Oh Tinselberry, Tinselberry,
where have you gone,
out across the car parks
shod in our distress?
 
               My cousins knead the turkeys till they whimper.
 
Tinselberry, wherefore this shame?
Who are you fleeing from?
See what gleeful vermin have the run
of your decaying pantry –
 
               My brothers gloat and toast disease.
 
We are divided now
between those who think Tinselberry deserted us
in the hour of our need,
and those who burn candles in the attic –
 
               At the family lunch
               the family devours.
 
Tinselberry
denounce them.
 

R. Rushforth Morley

published in Stand, Vol. 6.1

 
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Widows of Gressoney

We eat the season’s remains
boiling a brief summer’s fruit
and bottling it in vinegar.
 
Thorns are our chief fuel –
after the men have done their chopping and cursing
we tend their bleeding hands.
 
Spring is a fairy tale
that we croon over the coals
to mollify babes and fools.
 
French troops once brought news
of the king’s imprisonment,
but left us with a memory of figs.
 
Our preserves are made strong by containment –
how else to add flavour
to a diet of north winds and oblivion?
 

R. Rushforth Morley

published in Poetry Cornwall, 8

 
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