Group Therapy

We gather each day in this circle, I know everyone’s slippers
by heart. The liturgy of tartan, fluffy and sheepskin, begins
with confession, a suitcase of letters she never opened, the child
she abandoned, his lost dream of seeing elephants in Africa.
They offer losses like chocolates. I suck on the hard centre
of her accident, wanting to cry a tsunami of tears to wash it away.
 
I don’t, but he does, weeps like the child they never wanted,
an unspeakable nickname, a stomach was broken by boots,
word, flesh and blood become one. A mother-shaped hole
gapes in the elusive light, but no mother moves to fill it.
We breathe, simple as trees, as our father, the nurse
passes the cup with our pills, pierces the brocade of our arms.
 
He stinks of the smoking we’re not allowed to do, his inspiration.
She hums the tune called Slane. He says, Shut up, will you,
this isn’t church, you know. It is, I want to say but I’m the one
who never speaks. They sing in the chapel of my head,
one of my hands comforts the other as words fly away,
rise up and beating like doves against the locked windows.
 

Victoria Field

in collection A Speech of Birds, 2020, Francis Boutle Publishers,
ISBN 978-1-9999037-9-4

 
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Ardevora

It wasn’t a madeleine but words on a jar of jam,
Kea Plum, Ardevora tipping me sideways
in time and space. I’m in Cornwall again, on the Roseland.
It’s a sunny winter Sunday, like today, but well over
 
two decades ago. We’re wearing city coats and fur hats
because it’s cold, we’ve been to Russia, enjoy looking
contrary and formal among the jeans and jumpers
of out-of-season Cornwall. We’re walking the dog
 
through the tiny hamlet of Philleigh then turning back, stymied
by private land, a complex of creeks and beaches. Then lunch.
I have to look up the name though I can smell the pub,
its deep-fried food, open fire and cigarettes of course –
 
we’re talking long ago, a cosy, noisy fug. We bump into the girl
who makes this jam. She’s with her fiancé, house-hunting.
Later, they lived down that track, with kids, boats and books.
She’s hardly a girl now, it was another lifetime when I left it all.
 
Yet today, stirring chunks of plum into my breakfast porridge,
picking out stones, I’m back, still love you, laughing in a fur hat.
 

Victoria Field

in collection A Speech of Birds, 2020, Francis Boutle Publishers,
ISBN 978-1-9999037-9-4

 
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GP’s Waiting Room

We’re passengers in steerage on the Titanic
We can’t really afford the ticket. We smell.
Apart from Kate Winslett who’s turned up here unwontedly.
 
Our clothes are not very nice. Our posture is poor.
Our claims are meagre and ungrand. There is no drama in us.
We are simply ordinary. We apologise for our existence.
 
We are entitled to five minutes. Basically we are unattractive.
Apart from Kate Winslett. God knows what she’s doing
down here near the throb of the engines.
 
We sit looking at the haircut of the person in front.
We sigh and text. We have nothing better to do.
Our bodily secretions bother us.
 
We all know the ship will sink and there aren’t
enough lifeboats. It’s all for the best as long as Kate survives,
her hair spreading like a mermaid’s on the icy sea.
 

Victoria Field

in collection A Speech of Birds, 2020, Francis Boutle Publishers,
ISBN 978-1-9999037-9-4

 
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The Lost Boys

The theatre’s full of the hard-to-hear chatter
of lost boys describing
toys no one will buy them for Christmas
 
Some boys get lost when they are so little
no one’s yet pinned a name on them –
they disappear in the hot flame
 
of a hospital furnace
along with bandages, diseased kidneys
love-filled blood from their mother
 
Some have names but never know them
warm, well-fed and teddied
they drift away to wherever it is they want to go –
 
forget to wake up. Childhood’s a big country –
boys want to map it as soon as they can –
toddling towards the sheen of a deep pool
 
pointing a cocked gun at their brother in fun
Some boys lose themselves from the inside out –
once strong bones eaten by ice
 
Boys who think they know where they’re going
on the throb of a motorbike can, in an instant
turn into flowers at the road side –
 
cauls of cellophane holding the rain.
Mothers dream of fleeing cruel kings, boys held firm
in their arms – while, on stage
 
the boys lose themselves in flight, up and away
wild as the wind in bare trees and the heavy curtain
falls over and over again.
 

Victoria Field

in collection The Lost Boys, 2013, Waterloo Press,
ISBN 978-1-906742-61-4

 
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