The Reader

     November 2016
     Harrison Road Primary School, Fareham.
 
It is peaceful here…
 
through the tall school window copper oaks
orchestrate the wind.
 
I listen to their low
percussion of shaken leaves.
 
Bat boxes are now exposed
nailed to trunks already wounded
and scored.
                                             Bethany comes with a book
                                             her hair tousled and climbs the chair.
 
                                              I try small talk but her mind
                                             is set to find her place and voice.
 
                                             Her finger brushes every word
                                             her legs scissoring to cadences
 
and rhythms of distant feet
marching through flak and mist.
 
I think of a wren
with a song
 
so strong
it can send off
the hawk and falcon.
 
Suddenly Bethany stops…
                                            pins gently down by its tail
                                                         I love that word, she says and leans into me.
 
When gently lifts from her breath it flutters
over a stippled meadow of sun-shot poppies
 
their heavy seed heads turn in the wind.
 

Sue Davies

1st prize, Edward Thomas Fellowship Competition, 2020

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Reading Macbeth

Will a little water flush away what’s been done?
Time tells us the horror grows, and the light has
gone from our days because we have given in
to violent expeditions of love. What has become of us
holding our tongues in stolen afternoons, scorpions
stinging? Once tender as a flower, I now trade in blood,
my eyes forever open, yet unseeing in the murky rain
driving on the motorway, my heart shot through so
all the salt in the sea won’t heal the schism, this body
in need of you, in need of oblivion, a purgative to make
me pure again. There’s a knocking at the door. I place
one foot carefully in front of the other, sleep walking
from you awake in the dark, wringing my raw hands
all the perfumes in Arabia can never sweeten.
 

Sue Davies

published in The Interpreter’s House, Issue 67

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Skylarks

The boy light as a bird
is lifted into the boat by the gunner
bristling for the kill. The boy’s hand
placed on the rudder, the man at the helm
allows the boy to believe this is
what he must do to be among men,
steering the boat through spume
the fleet bobbing and tilting under
an uncertain sky darkened by a swarm
of migrating skylarks to winter in Africa.
 
The boy’s eyes grow wild with the beating
of wings, the fusillade, the parched rainfall
of crying birds tumbling from his memory
as he stands an old man before Gozzoli’s
fresco of St Francis blessing the birds.
And he recalls the dead kestrel with wings
stretched wide nailed to a crude cross
which made him scream in madness
to his mother’s skirts, where he trembled
like the birds with broken wings.
And his mother called him Little Bird –
Little Bird who lived all his life
in this place of rage, this unblessed house.
 

Sue Davies

in collection Blue Water Café, 2014, Oversteps Books,
ISBN 978-1-9068564-8-9;
third prize, Poetry Nottingham Competition, 2013

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Little Buddha

We are at peace.
It is an absolute, my love.
 
Your head is heavy
slumped against my cheek, downy
 
mole-nose
nuzzling your tight fist –
 
then a prim little milk mouth
silting up and surprising itself with a gulp.
 
I know my rocking and humming
are of no account – only the pulse
 
of a star will lull you to sleep.
I lay you down, little Buddha,
 
setting off on your trail of dreams.
Through your dark window, I see
 
a full moon caught in the black mesh
of the sycamore. There, a familiar
 
figure walks
along the furrows of the field
 
bending and rising, tending his snow-flowers.
 

Sue Davies

in collection Blue Water Café, 2014, Oversteps Books,
ISBN 978-1-9068564-8-9

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