Clearing Out Ghosts

 

In the orchard the cherry tree will

be humming like an electric substation,

its blossom brown with bees.

 

The dandelions will

make a cloth of gold

rich enough for a king.

 

The newly arrived swallows will

be strung on telephone wires

like black and white pearls.

 

In the house they will

be opening windows, sweeping

the corpses of clusterflies from the sills,

 

clearing out ghosts -

my ghost that will not come again.

 

 

 

The Little Things

 

Obliged to stop I notice:

 

ants processing up the fruit trees,

others descending,

lichen’s smudged fingerprints on bark,

the scarred whirls wide as owl eyes

left by pruning saws,

antlers of fungus in the moss,

the vortex of a snail shell,

a blackbird whetting

its beak on a branch,

the spot where the redstart

enters the cracked wall,

how a bird may add another

cringing worm to a full beak,

the claqueur of pigeon wings,

skedaddle sparrows high jinxing

on the telephone wire,

a white egg - cuckoo fodder -

on the flagstones,

 

the itch of a healing wound,

my life hanging on the wire fence

like sheep’s wool.

 

 

 

Bucina – What Remains

 

This space in the forest is not a clearing,

but a closing in.

 

The shock of willowherb through floor tiles,

a low stumble of walls,

twisted apple trees in an unpruned orchard.

 

The stream ahead is the border,

brown as rusted iron.

We could take the footbridge in two steps

and yet our nerves twitch.

We feel the current in our veins,

the pulse of the past,

and turn back.

 

Almost 25 years after the Iron Curtain came down, central European deer still balk at crossing areas where there used to be electrified fences.  The Guardian 23 April 2014

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Zoe Brooks’ long poem Fool's Paradise won the Electronic Publishing Industry Coalition award for best poetry ebook 2013. Her collection Owl Unbound was published by Indigo Dreams Publishing in October 2020 and Fool’s Paradise was published as a print book by Black Eyes Publishing in 2022.

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