Wild Daughter 61v29

Wild Daughter

Lauren K. Nixon

Copyright © 2021 Lauren K. Nixon

All rights reserved.

For all the wild ones

And for Lilian Majorie and Louis Keith Nixon

Other Titles

From The Mysterium

Fiction

Echoes of the Light

The Fox and the Fool

The House of Vines

Mayflies

Fiction and poetry

With the Superstars:

Title Not Included

Some Assembly Required

Functioning as Intended

This Way Up

Ghost Lights

In Case of Emergency

Out of the Box

Contents

Blackbird

Mist-Runner

Bide of the Wolf

Ice Cream

Hereditary

Frenemies

Ode to a Staffordshire Oatcake

Skeleton Crew

The Wild Moon

Fatigue

The Clap

Digging In

Ode to Hilda

Garden Song

Dream of Summer

Wild Daughter

Moon in a Bucket

Swimming with Pigs

Woman in the Valley

Overhaul

Dryad

Summer Storm

Sunset at Scarborough

Romance, Syncopated

Secondary Modern Magic

Erosion

Where the Ravens Went

Insufficient Blackberries

Contrast

Rhubarb Triangle

Reunion

X

Winter Roses

Blackbird

Blackbird in the apple tree

My grandfather planted

Below a cloud-streaked,

frost-laden sky:

What omen are you?

What news do you bring

To this unsettled, too-warm winter?

To this fresh-faced, incautious spring?

If hope is the thing with feathers,

Perhaps it also has a yellow beak,

A jet black eye

And the tang of sour cooking apples,

On a tree that was always more than half magic,

In the glisten of a tardy frost.

Mist-Runner

(From Functioning as Intended)

I stand at the keel

Of a fleet running warship.

A swift, sleek, mist-runner

That in older days harried the coast

Of this land that I call home.

I should be offended –

The blood that was spilled was part of my own.

In the old way of speaking,

In this wide, green land

I can see the line of my people

Back to the heathen under the mound.

It was my kin they were killing;

Women like me, carried off

To a less than certain fate.

Across the globe, flame and fear still

strike like distant thunder.

I am ‘civilised’,

And feel the shame and outrage

At every fresh assault

On the peaceful and the innocent

Of today.

I know the blood soaked

Into that timbered deck –

But I feel it less than I ought,

As a civilised creature

Among my fellow beasts.

This ship, these splintered boards

Were a part of that same storm

In an older age.

The time of heroes,

When killing meant glory or shame

And no one had invented

The word for guilt.

I live an ordered, quiet existence,

Free of the blood and smoke

Of that older age,

But gazing at

That ring-whorled prow,

I long for the storm and the sword.

To take to the whale-roads

Of mine or someone else’s ancestors

And win glory with blood.

To see the ice leaving the winter stream

And know it is time

To follow my friends

Into battle,

Into song.

To meet death smiling,

With conviction, not fear.

To delight in life and roar into the dark,

Happy to take my place among the steadfast ones

In a wide, warm hall

Where the mead never runs dry.

I fancy I see the longship

Rising softly in the water,

Salt rime like hoar frost

Clinging to her bows,

Hear the clash of shields

And laughter,

Carried on a fair spring wind.

But those are older days,

Distant by a thousand years,

And I have always been

More scribe than warrior.

An accidental poet

In my fortress of ink.

Still, I stand by the keel

Of this ghost of a ship

And hear the cries of sea birds

And taste the sea.

Bide of the Wolf

They call it the ‘Himalayan Trail’,

Because there is a bit of a hill,

So it seems to me that this valley’s

Tilt-headed, crooked-mouthed, sly wink

Sense of humour

Got into whoever named that path.

Not many holly trees or daffodils

In the Himalayas.

Not this much clay-slick mud, either;

Nor Sunday walkers in their neat, white,

Foolhardy clothes,

And lack of wellies.

We’ve always played with words round here.

There’s Hot Lane (it’s not);

Mow Cop Castle (a Victorian folly);

The ‘Roman road’ (a muddy farm track);

Banana Bend.

(I’ll give them this,

But I’ve never seen a banana as bendy as that.)

Up on the Moor, they still speak the old way:

Thick words, like gnarled tree bark

Bitten by the wind,

Full of the grammar of an older age -

A whistle in the teeth and gravel on the tongue,

Clinging like lichen whorls.

We tell each other stories,

Tall tales and jigs and reels.

Our phyletic histories,

The dance of our ancestors

Entwined with the soil and the

Water and the

Coal and the

Trees and the

Names and the

Iron and the

Pigs and the

Clay and the

Chrysanthemums of these hills.

There are rival stories, even, of how

Biddulph got its name:

The first is for the scholars

(And probably the truth):

‘By the delve’ – by the diggings.

Makes sense, given the fortunes made and squandered

On our coal and millstone grit.

There’s even wulfram, dragged out of the earth

Up Gillow Heath way,

Beyond the plague stone

On the corner.

The other is more fanciful,

More comely, more apt for whimsy,

Like we are:

‘The Bide of the Wolf’.

I feel like I’ve spent my whole life

Seeking her.

Ice Cream

Summer in February!

For half the globe

That makes sense -

But not here.

The world is topsy-turvy,

Leaning the wrong way,

Teetering. Toppling.

Kids in shorts,

Optimistic bees,

And not a cloud in the sky.

Even the ice cream van

Doesn’t seem horribly early this year.

(But what happens when

Winter snaps back? As surely it must?

It must – or what then?)

Across the choking ocean,

Where all our snow

Seems to have gone,

They scoff and say

They wouldn’t mind

A bit of global warming right now.

As if the evidence of their senses

Counts for naught.

It’s a peculiar form of myopia,

They share:

The rich, the powerful,

The thoughtless, the cruel.

And other, more ordinary ones,

Who just want to make a better life

For their kids

And don’t have time to worry

Until it’s too late.

(Is it too late?)

But fear makes people

Stop listening,

Go outside

And enjoy the unnatural sun.

The Earth is dying and we

Eat

Ice cream.

Hereditary

There was always rhubarb.

Like gravity, or sweetness, or sin.

Always.

I don’t a time before it.

Crumble on Saturdays, after Ju Jitsu.

Learning the subtle arts of the kitchen at your knee.

How to boil the milk in the pan I still have.

The proper rising time for bread.

Bananas and custard. Sweet peas on a stem.

Mince pies. Gigli and Mozart.

The mug of beef dripping in the cupboard,

Melting a ring into the wood of the shelf.

Picking redcurrants for a pie –

That time I found a worm in them

And no one believed me until Mum

Got out the magnifying glass

And we all squirmed in disgust.

The quick, practiced twist and flick of your wrist

That let you spin the pie plate and trim the crust.

Long stalks in the lee of the hedge,

In the back-back garden where the vegetables grew.

‘I’ll race you to the plum tree’,

And that would be the two-thirds marker in

A race you’d always let me win.

I would pretend to be delighted,

Pretend I didn’t know. I suppose I didn’t,

When my hair was white as aspen bark

And I still thought you both were giants.

Watching you trim the stalks

When I was too young to hold the knife.

(I wasn’t, but you always thought I was).

The smell of the shed where you hung your greatcoat,

Where I played with sawdust, soft as down.

We put the rhubarb leaves in the compost heap

Outside the door.

The time you told me rhubarb could be ‘forced’

And I couldn’t stop laughing at the words

Because all I could see was people chasing

It around the garden,

Whipping it beneath the buddleia –

And all you could see was me laughing.

All our sides were splitting at that little enamel table

With the red vinyl cover made of the same stuff

As the bathroom floor,

Where we baked bread and sat to eat,

And you once accidentally whisked cream into butter

Because you were watching Working Lunch

And got annoyed at Adrian Chiles.

The core is a crown, like the skulls of new born babies,

Or metal twisted into a ring.

The ones in your garden had a lineage

Of coal and plants and pigs.

They grew up with the coal smut of the mines,

The soot of the foundry in their leaves.

As much a part of that place as you, or them, or me.

I brought it north with me when I moved,

Seeking freedom and knowledge,

And wanting something from there with me.

I was heading to the Triangle. We looked it up on the map.

I didn’t believe there could be a place named after rhubarb.

It was too ordinary; too fantastic.

You showed me, together, aging fingers pressed upon

The paper of the atlas you used to do the crossword,

And warned me to beware of bandits.

I found it again on another map,

An older place and an older me.

Further north again, a dig in the rain, and the mist,

And the rain of Shetland.

The place where we stored our kit,

A ruined, ancient croft, had rhubarb around the door.

This was wild, unruly, island big. So were we.

We took some back to the bothy

And I made crumble – your recipe –

And didn’t boil the leaves,

Even though they would have cleaned our tools

Better than anything we could have got in a shop.

You didn’t know me when I got back.

Or you did, but by a different name:

My cousin’s or your sister’s.

I was the girl with white hair, running in your dreams.

I made crumble. You got the words wrong,

But you ed that, and for a moment,

I had my name again.

It was rhubarb my mother thought of first,

When the thing that didn’t kill –

Did kill – didn’t kill one of you

Was breaking through your skin.

Brave rhubarb shoots, pushing hard through the face

Of the soil we had worked, as the cancer was through yours.

You lost the sight in your good eye, that spring,

And wished you’d died on Simi,

When the doodlebug wrecked the mess hall,

On the one day you climbed the hill to eat your lunch.

The soil here is dreadful, but improving.

Little more than mud on concrete rubble, when we started,

But the rhubarb does okay.

With every stem I cut I wonder, does the soot and coal dust

Of those hundred generations still run in here?

Our cat sleeps beneath it now, when the sun is hot,

And my husband makes a cracking crumble,

But I already knew you liked him – liking implied

When you mistook him for my cousin, who you liked;

When you showed him the inside of your shed.

You would have hated the cat, though,

Gardeners, through and through.

Frenemies

Today, two of my friends are at war

So their governments would have you believe

But they are not

As long as neither one brings up the wrongs on both sides

Instead we talk of poetry

Of biology and stars

Share pictures of pets and kids

Ignore the hammering at the door

Hoping against hope that this time we will be ed over

That the Angel of Death is just ing through

If it were up to them, this would be sorted out

By a game of paper, scissors, rock

And that would be that

But hate runs deep

And cat gifs are thin shields against mortars

So the rest of us worry

And try to talk of gentler things

That don’t end in goodbye

Ode to a Staffordshire Oatcake

Nothin’ fancy,

Nothin’ flash.

Just a simple, golden round.

(Brown, if thay onner feelin’ poetic.)

Griddle-cooked,

Window-sold.

(“Cheers, duck!” and on thay way.)

Piled with cheese

And mushroom,

Maybe a bit of bacon.

(Crackin’ bit of snap when thay’re clemmed!)

On a cold mornin’,

Wrapped up tight.

(Thay, and thar oatcake, ‘n all!)

Thay con keep thar caviar,

Thay con keep thar lobster,

Thay con keep thar truffles, too.

Give may oatcakes –

The food of the gods.

That’ll do may, rayt!

Skeleton Crew

The Bone Store,

With its own peculiar scent;

An unambiguous room.

A lonely place

In the heart of the complex,

Quiet as a tomb.

The kind of place

You expect phantoms, and

One flickering light, to dispel the dark.

The light was there,

And it flickered all the time; but

Naught else to give nightmares spark.

Thirteen hundred persons,

Packed in boxes, labelled,

Lovingly cleaned of grave dirt.

We questioned them:

Read from their remains

Their joy, their hurt.

Still, I was cautious

Among the roller-racking

And all those silent dead,

Speaking to us

Across centuries of change,

About the lives they led.

The Wild Moon

(From Ghost Lights)

April, and with April’s changeable moods,

In both weather and heart.

We find comfort in constancy, in the reliable,

And turn our faces skyward, to seek her again.

And what a sight!

The supermoon, on a cloudless night!

Our own fair neighbour, amplified.

A friend, waving from an appropriate distance.

The perfect ambassador for hope:

A silvered promise

That those times we long for will come again,

As surely as she.

Fatigue

I miss them, but then, I always miss them.

We hold each other at distances in this

Collection of people, other people call family.

Miles and hearts and houses apart.

But I don't know if I miss them any more,

Now one is gone and the other only here in body,

Than I did when they were whole, but far away.

We have been a family of distances

For as long as I can ,

Existing as stories of one another,

Told by other parties.

I don't know what to feel,

But I know this feeling of confusion is mine,

And not ruled by the dictates

Of how others see public grief.

The Clap

(With apologies to John Denver, and Bread and Roses)

I’m sure it used to mean something else.

Something shameful, something to be concealed.

Not this riotous celebration,

This joy in people’s work.

This simple act: hand against hand,

In garden after garden,

Window after window,

While the children’s rainbows

Stain the light pouring out of

A million brightened kitchens.

We’re touched with all the radiance

Of knowing people care;

That people still have the courage

To put their lives on the line

For the rest of us.

Because that’s what it comes down to:

That is what we applaud,

Thankful that they are there

And skilled, and willing,

Despite exhaustion and fear,

And lack of respect.

ed by volunteers

Brave enough to leave their homes

And battle this thing.

So we clap, and do what we can:

Stay home; stay safe; stay clean.

There will be no marching for us,

Not just now.

But there is a shame for me

At the heart of this applause:

The decade long denuding

Of our health service.

That thing we were told

We could sell,

That was not ‘fit’

Until we were not fit –

Until the world was not fit.

The plundering of funding,

Kit, personnel.

The pared back hatred

Of people we are taught

To think of as ‘other’

Until we need them.

Until they can be ‘of use’.

Give us bread and give us roses,

But give us ventilators, too,

And scrubs and visors,

And tests and disinfectant,

And gloves and Visas, for the ones

You would have turned away.

Raise nurses’ pay.

Give doctors the time of day.

‘No more the drudge, the idler,’

Un-numbered women sang.

Yet still we have ten that toil,

Where one reposes.

So, I am held captive

By the rage that I feel,

Because to show it

Would be taken as disrespect

For the bloody hard job

Amazing people are doing

Every damn day.

Soon,

When we sound the all clear,

We shall go marching, marching,

In the beauty of the day.

But not this day.

So, I applaud,

Because people have earned that,

And earn it still.

But I am ashamed,

Because they shouldn’t fucking have to.

Digging In

(From Ghost Lights)

It has been some time since I last wielded a spade,

And this particular one has lineage of its own.

Like Trigger’s broom, it is a thing of parts:

It got its newest handle yesterday;

The blade and shaft are the same that cut the clay

Of my grandparents’ vegetable beds.

I am a thing of parts, too.

Part of me will always be there; another part

Will live forever on a rain-swept island to the north,

Among the longhouses. Another in the woods

Behind my mother’s home, and in the theatre,

Playing with words and light.

All of them, digging in.

Part of me wants to run,

To walk out into the wild and keep on going,

Somewhere we have never heard of this thing.

Or dance on the green with my neighbours,

Threading bodies around ribbons around the maypole,

Rejoicing in the spring.

But I won’t risk all those breaths not taken.

So, I in when they sing across fences,

I cut turf and sow seeds, I bake scones and make soup.

I wash the curtains – and my hands –

And I keep people company in pixels.

And while my mind roams free,

This part of me is staying right here, like everybody else.

All of us, digging in.

Ode to Hilda

In homage to the paintings of Duane Bryers, who created arguably the best and most joyful pin-up girl, ever

Parasol overhead like a counterweight,

One arm thrown out on the other side,

Confidently placing one foot

In front of the other,

With a dancer’s grace

Like this is a balance beam,

Not a rope fence slung between

Uprights full of splinters.

I watch her tip-toe boldly,

Without fear,

Though we both know

If she makes a miss-step,

She’ll end up sprawled

In the knee-high, sun-dried grass.

Laughing, no doubt, and bruised.

But when has that ever stopped her?

With her copper curls piled haphazardly,

Flour sack bikini tied on,

Knees red from picking meadow flowers,

Hands and soles tough from scrumping apples,

She saunters on, rightfully unashamed of her curves

And taking great delight in flinging herself at life.

Joyful, like the small brass bells on her blue-green parasol,

Singing for every step.

The fence carries on around the bend in the road,

Where I cannot follow.

I feel like, as soon as she is out of sight

She will go on laughing forever.

Garden Song

Rosemary for remembrance

A pocketful of thyme

Peppermint for sweetness

Further down the line

Bay enhances meat

Sage goes well with butter

Chillies for a bit of spice

Radish in a gutter

Chives among the roses

Keeping down the weeds

Coriander in a pot

Lavender for bees

Nasturtium for a salad

Nettle for a soup

A sprig of hawthorn, just for luck

Marjoram on the stoop

Borage for a summer drink

Chamomile for peace

Feverfew does what it says

Stings a dock will ease

Clocks of dandelion

Garlic for your heart

Apple blossom, just for joy

Catnip plays its part

Foxglove’s close to poison

Fish is nice with dill

Tarragon, a welcome friend

Rhubarb growing still

Potatoes in their velvet bed,

Fat tomatoes on a vine

Beans are running upwards

Lupins in a line

Courgettes spilling over beds

Corn between the squash

In the border, marigolds

The gooseberry thinks it’s posh

Parsley bursting through the cracks

Fennel reaching tall

The soil is fed with clover

A purpose for it all

Dream of Summer

A purple haze hangs over the purple moor,

The honey-sweet heather ruffled here and there

By a languid evening breeze.

The sun is setting in an auburn, burnt umber sky

As we make our way back down the track

And into the cool, enclosing green.

Branches filled with full-throated song, the greenwood

Celebrates the coming night, as do we, footsore and content,

And far less musical.

Thyme and the scent of lemons spill about our door,

A scatter of snail trails making silvery patterns underfoot –

And inside –

The promise of warm toes and warm hearts,

Soft voices in unison, a soft blanket’s embrace,

And dreams of cerulean blue.

Wild Daughter

In these woods I glimpse my shadow,

Myriad reflections of my younger self:

Balancing on logs,

Paddling in the brook,

Climbing up rocks,

Racing around corners to see

What the next bend might bring.

I see her, that strong-limbed,

Clumsy, glorious adventuress,

Sun-bleached, flaxen hair

Getting everywhere,

Rooting for pinecones,

Mud up to her knees.

Laughing at the wind.

I hear her song among the trees,

Sometimes quieter,

Sometimes sadder,

But always here –

And always herself.

I touch the stones her small hands grasped.

My footsteps follow hers –

Up this hill,

Down this winding path,

Past the leat and boathouse,

Around the lake

And home.

I know her,

This wild daughter of these witches’ woods;

I know her –

And I am glad she is still in me.

Moon in a Bucket

When I was little I wanted the moon.

I would reach up to grasp it

Because I didn’t understand

How far or how big it was,

Or how small I was,

Or how it’s not really something

That ever should be owned.

I was a little older when I read a book

Where a dragon caught the moon

In a bucket of water,

Bringing it closer,

Making it small.

A way to teach a child that beautiful things

Are not permanent if not treated with respect.

I think we have forgotten

(Since memory is tricky

And our lives seem long until they don’t),

But once there were people like us

With hearts that didn’t balk at being fired into the sky

In a big metal bucket.

That didn’t balk at maybe never coming home.

Who rejoiced at science’s chance to be daring.

And all the others down here

Who wove with numbers and hoped

And somehow brought

The bucket back to Earth.

We are experts at forgetting,

At setting ourselves apart.

Telling ourselves that

We are the only.

We are alone.

That ‘other’ is never to be trusted.

That we are not one tribe

Full of other little tribes.

We say ‘That Is The Way It Has Always Been’.

And perhaps it was.

Except for that one day in July,

When a whole quarter of all the people

Alive on our world looked up –

And knew.

Swimming with Pigs

(From Title Not Included)

If I had one wish

My wish would be

To swim with pigs

In a sapphire sea.

Woman in the Valley

There’s a woman in the mountain –

Or so they say on Uig –

And I often think it of this valley, too.

Some old soul,

Of coal and woods and millstone grit.

A great ancestress, languidly sprawled

At the foot of the Pennine chain.

Splashing her toes in the Inch,

Dancing on the frozen Serpentine,

Rolling her shoulders through

Dark, glittering, tunnel-bitten seams,

Running joyful through the heather-clad moors

And down among the dahlias and the bees.

Hers are the quarries and the adits,

The pitheads and the daffodils,

Wickenstones and Old Hall.

The warm, pink stones of the Norman church

And its sweet-voiced bell that always speaks of home.

The axe and the sword on the so-called Templar graves.

Rock on the Rocks and Up in Arms.

The cool, sweet water of Sprink Bank.

Bilberries at Nick o’ the Hill

And the folly on the Mow.

There’s a woman in the valley,

And maybe that old tale of how we got our name

Isn’t so fanciful as some might claim.

This is her bide and she is the wolf

And in this valley,

So are we.

Overhaul

Mist, like a shroud, clung heavy to the garden on that last day.

It was the ing of an age.

The last remnants of the old shed in which he spent his days,

The path she trod beneath the washing line,

The bricks they cleaned as children,

The oak I ‘accidentally’ planted when I was eight.

The night before had been indigo and teal, tinged with pink

As the sun sank behind the houses on the far valley side,

Then midnight blue and wreathed in smoke from the

Door-frame, woodworm, timber-frayed,

iron-nail, copper wire, creosote fire,

As we drank and talked, comparing bruises and bramble cuts.

Playing with the puppy, not yet seven months old,

And the cat that watched with lidded eyes

As we dismantled his favourite hiding places.

The newest inheritors to this stocky patch of clay.

Tomorrow, there would be aches and laundry,

Routine; the never-coming buses; back to work and school.

But the sun burned off the last of the dew-soaked air

And left us bathed in the sweet clarity of valley light.

It all seemed new, these things I’d seen a thousand times before.

New and possible.

A fresh start.

Dryad

I am a woman made of trees

I am root and trunk

I am branch and leaf

Catkin and acorn

Spinner and cob

Pine needle and clubby bud

I reach for the sun

I sigh for the rain

Shooting for the sky

Feet grounded in the earth

A slow-thinker

Building ring upon ring of self

As the seasons ebb and flow

Soft pops and cracks in the dark

Fresh buds and falling leaves

I am the sapling

Slight and slender

Bending to fit to wish or will

Usually my own

Whipping back and forth

I am the sturdy trunk

Stubborn and immovable

Joyfully reaching upwards

Putting forth fruit

Close-grained and beautiful

I am the twilight tree

With thinning crown

Crack-barked and heavy-limbed

Watching my silvering bark

Wary of gaps, in memory and mind

I am the drying

The storm-struck husk

Of all the trees I used to be

Teeming with life other than mine

Returning to the soil

I am thorn and blossom

I am needle and bark

Knot and corm

Bole and bough

Canopy and bitter fruit

I am a woman made of trees

Summer Storm

Sole to soul

Bare feet on warm stone

In slow, steady slaps

Other feet run,

Their owners shrieking,

Caught unawares

But I felt this coming

The tension stretched

Across the bruised plum sky

Heavy with change

With rain

With the crackle of potential

Marigold scent rising

Softly singing the summer’s call

The promise of balance

The wind picks up

Casting dandelion fluff in a

Wide, whispering swirl

The dust glistens

Sheets of whit-blue lightning

Snap up and then down and then up

Fat, hot raindrops scatter

On skin, on stone, on road

Giving up the heady petrichor

I linger

My skin drinks in the sweet, soft

Drowsy droplets

Cotton candy clouds

Chased with feathers

Are long since fled

The world is made anew

Sunset at Scarborough

Gull circling;

Light catching,

Cliff hatching,

Scrap snatching,

Song crying,

Beach scrying,

Feather flying,

High feeling,

Free-wheeling

At the dying of the day.

Evening calling,

Feathers falling,

Coast trawling,

Where the rock

Meets the sand

Meets the sea

Meets the sky.

Romance, Syncopated

I’m not much for romance, me.

I like fresh flowers as much as the next gardener,

Glamouring up the living room

With daffodils or freesias,

The perfect imperfections of roses,

The flash of violets in my hair.

Bright, ballsy sunflowers,

Shouting their presence in the kitchen.

Drowsy thistles in autumn hedgerows

When we walk back from the pub,

Hand in hand.

Chocolate, too, is good for the soul;

Not so much the waistline.

Going out for dinner

Is for meeting with friends,

As much as lovers,

And grand gestures tend to be lost

On both of us.

Among the minutiae of the day to day,

Romance is out of step.

You never were much of a one for dancing.

Syncopated,

You

Call

Yourself,

Which suits me fine.

I like our weird rhythms:

The laughter,

The pepper pots in lampshades,

The finding things out,

The silliness and puzzles.

Even the sound effects on

Chucky Fucking Egg.

But I do think maybe romance,

After all, is getting up

Ten minutes earlier than usual,

To fold the laundry you know

Has been pissing me off

All week.

Secondary Modern Magic

Chemistry

Is making things go

‘Bang’.

Physics

Is understanding how things go

‘Bang’,

And how

‘Bangs’

Of various sizes effect the universe,

In language we can understand.

Biology

Is working out the causes and effects of

Organic ‘bangs’

Across a complex, illogical network

Of interconnected systems,

Governed by the kind of puzzle locks

You get in hidden object games

Devised by lunatics.

Like why something weird happens

To the pupil size in your eye

When you tweak a particular nerve

In your armpit.

Erosion

It’s not hate I feel, or anger, really –

Though sometimes yes, what little there is left breaks through

(but never to your face, because I have learned what faces to show you).

Just love.

Small, but the same as it always was,

Carried by the name of ‘daughter’

And kept in a box for your increasingly infrequent visits.

Carefully, Carelessly moulded.

Shaped to fit inside your life –

But only when you wanted me.

Only when you

That you have an eldest child;

The one ‘you didn’t leave, really’

But still moved hundreds of miles away from.

It got a little smaller each time, like

When you stopped coming to visit,

When you stopped ringing, even.

When you told my single parent that she couldn’t imagine the cost of childcare.

When – even this year – you lied about

The drinking, that driving ban; the way you treat my kin.

But most of it went that summer, when I was twelve,

When you’d spent the spring telling me I should visit Orkney.

That you went there every year,

That it was great for archaeology,

That I would love the puffins.

And you came back and showed me the pictures

Of your lovely holiday

That was just for family.

You didn’t even think

What that might say to me.

So, no, I don’t hate you

And no, I’m not angry;

Not anymore.

That emotion too has been reduced when it comes to you.

All I have is love.

Love, but eroded.

Shaped by absence, distance, convenience.

Because the thing is,

When you say ‘family’

You never mean me.

Where the Ravens Went

(From This Way Up)

Once, a long time hence

They were the guardians

The tricksters

The spies

Omen birds

Bringing dark clouds behind them

Huginn and Muninn

Memory and Mind

Odin’s minions

Fixing you, steady

With the gaze

Of the old gods

Carrion creatures

Mediators between life and death

Liminal and crafty

Never entirely on our side

To be watched; wary

Some of our mistrust lingers:

We call them a ‘conspiracy’

We call them an ‘unkindness’

A conceit, of course, on our part

They’re simply birds

Playful

Clever

Mischievous

Affectionate

Amongst their own kind

But sometimes you watch them

And wonder

If you weren’t watching

What they might be

Behind those coal black

Questing

Cold, carrion eyes

Would they still be only birds?

Or something else:

Something older

Wiser

Colder?

You wonder where they fly

When they rise, wings spread

Eyes lifted skyward,

Quick staccato chatter

Their wicked laughter

Ringing in the air

And one jet black feather

Dew encrusted

Iridescent

Left behind

To mark their age

Insufficient Blackberries

I am thirty-three

And in that silent panic

That is full of noise

Which grips me

On the windy side

Of the witching hour,

The onslaught of maths begins:

I am a third of a whole human old.

Some get less than half again,

Others less still –

More get less than me.

Every moment is precious

And when they’re gone

They do not come again.

There is never enough time

And even if I wrote for every second

Of every minute

Of however long I’m still alive

It wouldn’t be enough.

And gripped by this relentless beat

Of why aren’t I doing more - ?

Why aren’t I living more - ?

Why aren’t I - ?

Why – ?

When I start the tally of

My recent years,

I find insufficient blackberries.

Plenty of doing, plenty of going;

Plenty of toing and froing –

But not much to show

For a decade after my degree

When mostly I’m just tired all the time

And can’t hold down a real job,

And only pick up my trowel

In a figurative sense,

When something cool goes past

On my newsfeed,

Or when the tomatoes

Need bedding in.

I want more.

I want more purple-stained

Fingers and mouths,

More bramble scratches,

And war wounds and hockey matches.

I want more avoiding leeches,

More reaching for peaches,

More grubbing on beaches for shells.

More feet in the water,

More giving no quarter,

More bugs caught on trips

In ships, with a fat cone of chips.

More ion, less fashion,

And lots more mash.

I want making and breaking,

More baking, and even

The aching that follows a long hike

Up Roseberry Topping.

Less shopping, more chopping veg’.

I want ditches and witches and stitches on pitches.

I want painting and skating,

And a lot less hating.

More off-key singing,

More bell ringing,

Bringing in the new year,

Brewing wine and beer in time to share it.

More swearing it was there

When I put it down a minute ago.

More finding lost keys,

And scraping of knees,

And fewer damn fees.

More seeing new towns

And chalk downs and castles.

Less hassle – and fewer pointless tassels.

I want more dancing in the rain,

More riding steam trains.

Less ‘life down the drain’,

And matching ankle sprains.

More life, less strife,

Being a better housewife.

More tiny toes

And watching shows with those who’ll go.

I want more poetry in motion,

To go to the ocean;

To follow a notion

And actually finish.

More spinach and bacon and cheese.

Fewer allergies.

I want more humble bumble bees.

More kittens gone viral and

To stop this spiral of heating

And hating

On this stupid spinning rock,

And othering for profit

And those who’re winning from it.

More thinking, less sinking,

More growing my own,

Less time alone.

I want more yoga and stretching,

And fetching of things.

More adventure and venturing out

And about.

To shoot more clouts,

Eat more beansprouts.

To drink more water,

Pay less attention to ‘ought to’, or

The things you’re supposed to do

By the time you’re thirty-three,

And time feels like it’s

Slipping from your grip.

And this stillness I have cultivated

To keep panic at bay is all very well,

But generally there are

Insufficient blackberries.

Contrast

(From Functioning as Intended)

It’s art, I suppose,

That fills these walls

With chrysallised women;

Cherished,

Naked,

Looking bloody cold.

Their curves caressed

By brush and pen,

Their hair curled,

Softly falling in inky,

Serpentine tresses.

All I see is bones.

Bare, scraped back things.

The consequence of

An artist’s demands

Or of their demons.

No affection

In those undressed lines,

Only bodies

Arranged, naked,

On a sofa,

On a floor.

They seem to me too much

Like outlines in chalk,

Where someone

Has been thrown away,

Discarded.

Cowering creatures,

Crime-scene silhouettes.

No longer people;

Only things.

Things to be ired

I stand and look

At these graceless forms:

Beauty unconcealed –

And the opposite of that –

And find

Few things so disheartening

Than uncomfortable looking women,

Sprawled.

Rhubarb Triangle

Three things my grandfather told me,

When I left and flew the nest:

‘Always keep a £20 in your pocket’;

‘Beware of bandits’;

‘Eh, there’s good soil for rhubarb

Where you’re going.’

The twenty was good advice

And I follow it when luck allows;

Good for emergencies.

Good for a quick getaway.

(My grandparents worried about everything).

The thing about bandits seems less comic now

Than when he said the same

When we went to Spain,

And he warned us there were bandits there,

On ‘banana boats’,

And I imagined men in masks and capes

On one of those inflatable things

You see at the beach,

Accidentally puncturing it with their rapiers.

There was a time when it seemed to me

My grandad’s mental map was full of annotations:

‘Here be bandits!’ in gothic script.

I’m older now, and I know what he meant:

Pirates are real, and not like the ones in books.

The same goes for bandits.

I’ve had my share of run-ins,

And they don’t all wear masks

And stripy tops, like Burglar Bill.

He was right about the rhubarb, too.

He showed me on a map,

Pointed out the rhubarb triangle,

And I laughed and asked if it was like

The Bermuda triangle,

And he laughed, and Grandma

Came to investigate the noise,

And got drawn in as well.

I brought up a couple of crowns

From my favourite grandad’s garden,

Descendants of the ones in his

Favourite grandad’s garden,

And probably from his, as well.

They come up every year,

Beneath the roses,

And make bittersweet crumbles

That remind me of them both:

Grandad in the garden,

Grandma in the kitchen;

Equal partners in a lifelong dance.

But I was right about the Bermuda Triangle.

This place is hard to leave.

I always thought I’d go back home

At some point, probably before now,

And find a house among the pit-heads

And daffodils of my youth.

But here I am still,

Connected by the Pennine chain,

In the pink Bermuda Triangle.

It was called the Bradford Bungee, at uni:

People always seem to come back,

No matter how far they went.

And it’s true, that this is home, too,

Among the old mills and the dales

And the airborne hints of spice.

Home is what you make it,

And I have things to do,

A theatre to play in,

Woods to scramble in,

Poetry to listen to,

People I’d miss.

This is home, too – it is.

And that’s enough.

Until I go back,

Feel that land beneath my feet,

Taste that valley air

And feel the weight of twenty generations

Of Nixons and Baileys,

All looking down at me

From the hills,

Wondering when,

And think of that one,

Five generations back,

Who said, ‘Edication taks the childer awa’

And they won’ come back’.

Reunion

(From Some Assembly Required)

It was a jumping cold day.

One of those brass monkeys, frost-on-the-windows, killer gorilla days,

where the sky is the colour of brushed blue steel

and pale, fading-light gold.

They turned into the little winding track.

One of those rugged, muddy, not-quite-a-farm-track paths,

never quite dry, even on the hottest days,

and now drifting full of halfway mulched, tumble-down leaves.

The windows shone bright,

that homely, yellow, chase-the-gloom-out light,

inviting them into the well-trod kitchen,

and on through the room beyond.

It was a party to .

A Snapchat, back-chat, whisky glass and Christmas in November,

up all night and foggy-headed thing.

A real fire and toasted names affair.

They walked next day along the river,

the up again, down again, all around the bed again river,

and laughed and sang, and tried to pretend

it wouldn’t soon be Monday and back to work again.

They wondered where they’d be in another ten years,

ten bustling, hustling, workaday years,

called themselves ‘old’, wished themselves young

and promised to do this all again.

The clouds came down around them,

soft and cold, and kitten’s breath silent around them

as they parted ways

back into the real world for a time,

dreaming of another jumping cold, killer gorilla,

tumble-down leaf, golden light and mince pie,

river-walking, laughter-filled day,

when they could pretend they were adults

and not just kids who had grown older

between the rushing days and the cold,

old starlight.

[x]

There is a fine line between hope and despair

Two lines, in fact

In a box

But fools shout loud

And crooks shout louder

And people seem incapable of listening with their brains

And I worry

I worry what this fair, sweet, stubborn, ludicrous island

Is becoming

Will become

Some days

It seems like nothing ‘we, the people’ do or say

Makes a difference at all

But we are not what they say we are

In their paid, puppet rags that splash disaster and covet hate

There is a fine line between despair and hope

Two lines, in fact

So cry havoc, and let fly the dogs of democracy

And let December be ed

As the time we said

No more

Winter Roses

Even in the

darkest days of winter,

the sun still shines

and the winter roses

bloom.

Are they late

or

are they early?

Only they can tell,

and they only whisper

soft and sweet,

echoes of sunlight and frost.

Acknowledgments

I’ve always enjoyed reading or hearing poetry, but I never really expected to write any of it. Even now, it mostly happens by accident - though now I’ve written enough to fill a pamphlet, I probably can’t refer to myself as an ‘accidental poet’ anymore!

Thanks must go to Niall Fleming, for cups of tea, bear hugs, rescuing me from technology and putting up with me leaving poetry all over the place.

I owe a great debt of gratitude to Mike Farren, for casting an expert eye over my ragtag band of poems and helping me bring them into some semblance of order.

Also to Jessica Grace Coleman and G. Burton, who are always ready to listen to word-related woes and who tend to be the first people to see a new piece of work. To Rae Bailey, Laura Sinclair, Helen L. Bourne, Wayne Naylor, Lizzie Nolan, Dawn Mary Hemming, Claire Williams and the other folks in the Writeorium and the Curiosities writing groups, who are always game for a writing adventure. To the hardy, weird souls in the Treehouse, who are patient and amused even when I periodically dump words all over them.

Tremendous thanks to Rae Bailey and Jessica Grace Coleman who kindly looked over the manuscript for me and were gentle and helpful in their !

Also to the Rhubarb at the Triangle poetry club in Shipley, who gave me the confidence to share my poetry, and whose sessions are so full of warmth and

inspiration that attending one is rather like giving your brain a warm bath.

And of course, a big thank you to my patrons on Patreon! You’re all magnificent.

As ever, thanks to James at www.goonwrite.com for the excellent cover art.

About the Author

An ex-archaeologist enjoying life in the slow-lane, Lauren K. Nixon is an indie author fascinated by everyday magic. She is the author of numerous short stories, The Fox and the Fool, Mayflies and the Chambers Magic series, along with various attempts at poetry and a largely accidental play. When she's not writing or curating The Superstars, trying to think of something interesting to read at Rhubarb - the local poetry club - or ing other writers in various places in the real and on the internet, she can be found gardening, singing, crafting, reading, watching documentaries, researching weird stuff online, making miniatures, laughing uproariously, annoying the cat, playing the fool and set deg with Shipley Little Theatre and playing board games.

You can find out more at her website: (www.laurenknixon.com)

Or check her out on Instagram (@laurenknixon)

Twitter (@LaurenKNixon1)

Facebook (@IndieAuthorLaurenKNixon)

Patreon (www.patreon.com/laurenknixon)