A few poems from my collections ...

from 'Salt Road'

Limestone Outcrop Birkrigg

You can sit on any

of these limestone outcrops

watching Meadow Browns land on

harebells, Alpine ladies slippers

or tormentil, listen to the wind

shushing bracken

as you sit sheltered, dog to one side

panting, waiting for a stick

to be thrown.

Listen to larks rising, 

pulling scent of thyme from earth,

their song falling like water.

Should you ever get bored with tormentil,

Meadow Browns or harebells, raise your eyes,

look at horses on the horizon.

Sea-Jay or shire mare, Annelise,

or white ones

folding over mudflats and marram

as the tide licks its way

into gulleys and channels.

Don’t be fooled,

it may look as though it’s creeping –

each wave searching

for a foothold

but underneath lies its venom,

quicksand and currents.

Watch it

rush in under the viaduct at Plumpton,

or sit near the hide at the south end of Walney

when it empties the Bay,

returns to the Irish Sea.

Well drilled

Morecambe Bay

I've never seen this before, oyster-catchers stretched out

in a well-drilled line as the tide comes in

the roar of its dull thunder powering the sea

that pours across flat sands.

One moment

I could've sworn all I saw was mud, but

as the sun breaks cover

to draw the bay silver, it’s the tide I see

bellying in with sidewinder waves

and the birds, black-and-white waiters with orange bills

dragging it in on invisible filaments

like a table cloth

all along the edge of the sea

over flat, grey mud where waves curve

and birds scurry, actors

in the twice daily drama of drawing

the tide shorewards.

All Day i Sit in the Woods

”we have come to the edge of the woods”

            ‘Jacklight’, Louise Erdrich

All day I sit in the woods, dreaming

all day and all night I sit,

my hair on fire with the wind.

All day I sit and sing. 

All day I sit my back against this pine

my breathing slows, becomes sap 

that oozes up and down the tree’s spine. 

All day I sit and sing, my back to the wind.

All day and all night the flashlights green

as northern lights, all night I and the pines

weave a song from alders and willows

that live below the horizon.

All day I claw my mind to the top of the woods

my hands somersault over and under 

become a tapestry of limbs.

I and the wind and the pines discover each other again. 

Discover the smell of men, their cigarette breath, their 

unhinged shotgun fingers triggered, crooked.

All day I sit and weave the wind

my hair becomes grey lichen

I hang from branches.

My name now is no name

my body is white and silver

my name is birch and alder.

My tongue the sound of finches

my feet sewn deep into earth

all day I grow deeper

from 'The Other Side of the Bridge'

me and janine

vickers shipyard, barrow-in-furness, 1973

legs swinging and us licking ice creams

on the submarine dock our platform shoes

cool and wonderful and the men whistling

and shouting hey love, gi'e us a lick!

and when we turned and gave them you know a

sidelong look they laughed but me and janine

we knew they didn't mean anything by it they

were just joshing so anyhow we sat there

with our ice creams trickling down the side

of the cones golden and crisp the flakes falling

onto our mini skirts and we knew we'd have to

go back in soon but the day was warm it was warm

it was summer we were seventeen and we looked good

and we knew it and we loved it when the sailors came -

foreign submariners from argentina israel the middle east

and russia and us listening to their funny accents
and they came here to vickers to board their subs

and our own being built alongside revenge

and resolution and them going on patrol

in the baltic or the pacific and me and janine 

dreaming of smuggling ourselves on board

to wake up in a foreign port somewhere --

which was just about when the hooter would go

and we had to go back in to our dusty offices
on the sub dock with the sun blocked out

and snopake and pens and a deep pile of papers

with typos to correct.

Crossing the Prairie

There goes green corn

fierce as tornadoes

her cougar skin rippled

her bright eyes dazed with

dust-storms and headlights

she crosses the prairie on

her greencorn song of misery

upright as telegraph poles

lining the freeways.

Boy whistles wind

wind comes running

wind combs her back

of greengold corn

for a hundred miles

combs greencorn hair.

Nightstars crackle

moonwafer breaks open.

At dawn, a deluge of buffalo

at dawn, their ghosts cross the plain

at dawn, their notorious herd of steam

their outrageous breath

their sweat and blood

their sinews and bones.

These ghosts of buffalo.

These man-haunting bison.

Ghost bison pound earth

their hooves the pestle

this land their mortar.

Look! a city catapults

itself across the sky:

a wave of cities

a deluge of buffalo

a rivering of ghosts.

Grass cracked moons

grass tricky as coyote

grass spilling greengold

handsome as cougar

moon mirror cracks

buffalo stampede

into dust

into headlights.

from 'Passio'

A poem not yet written

My grandmother painted buffalo
on the earth's curves
to teach me of the stars' courses

she sang of deer, stained her hair purple

and cried when I asked her

where she went to in her dreams

“bring me a bucket filled with feathers

she told me
and I will drink them

bring me a buckskin waterbag
filled with saltwater
and I will shape you a heaven
that will make you throw back your head

and laugh at canyons and coyotes

a heaven that will make your footprints spring to life in the sand

feel my years, here and here
great rivulets have streamed down my body
and the blood that burst from my belly
held your mother
held you

your body holds the buffalo I painted

on the cave walls
at Lascaux.”

 from 'The Skin'

The Mushroom Woman drew a muscle from her own thigh

(saying from Yanomami, Amazonas)

            

The Mushroom Woman drew a muscle from her thigh

cream & brown

I remember seeing her as she walked the dew

her thighs cool, smelling of earth.

The Mushroom Woman drew a muscle from her thigh

made it into flesh

                        she called it man

when she saw what she had made, she wept

            still

she shaped him with cool fingers

            nose

            eyes

            hair

            lips

these she parted

            breathed him alive.

 Publishers: 

Salt Road 2013 and The Other Side of the Bridge 2012 Indigo Dreams (ed. Ronnie Goodyer)

Passio 2006 and The Skin 2003 Flarestack Pubs. (ed. Charles Johnson)

Poems also appear in: 'Running Before the Wind' Grey Hen Press, 'Peony Moon', 'For Rhino in a Shrinking World', 'Smoke' magazine, Burns' Window Project, Dumfries

Geraldine Green Salt Road

please note; all poems are published, copyright Geraldine Green
Photos; Birkrigg Common, Kansas
all photos by Geraldine Green, copyright