New poems by Graham Mort

Three new poems (and one older) by Graham Mort, illustrations by Claire Jefferson.

A Swallow Maybe

It falls into the orchard’s

expectancy

from Africa’s parted

veil of heat

a blue knot of lightning

splintered from icy

stratospheres

surprising the

suddenly crackling grass

then slants between

trunks of pear trees

mossy and ingrown

sparking between

pylons and power lines

their toxic chitter

their stanzas of unformed

consonants

it turns our heads’

heliotrope bloom

of astonishment

unpinning its brooch

of lapis from

the afternoon

a foil for certainties

that steer into dusk –

those oyster catchers

pronouncing

the salt-dazed mirage

of the estuary

now it is flown into

the copse like war

its red throat silently

booming and aflame

scattering wood sorrel

into the gloom

shy and self-amazed

its cry is high-wired

drawn beyond anvils

to the thinnest

highest

most inhuman note

on which it vibrates

ululates

vanishes

between the synapses

of our eyes:

a thought split

between us

unfinished

lost maybe

or never

happening.

Arachnid

A black spider on your hand, uncannily

there, dropped from the nowhere crannies

they haunt; a hex, a silky tightening

in your gut, a momentary sense of fear

that you shake loose until you Google it – a

black lace weaver abseiling from vernacular

taxonomy: cave spider, crab spider, false

widow, stone spider, grass spider, hammock

weaver, green huntsman, purse web spider

pirate spider, grey wolf spider and the

zombie spider already half-dead in its fungal

shroud. You remember in autumn those

big house spiders scuttering across the

carpet, the way you coax them into empty

mustard pots with a magazine, juggle them

into wet geraniums on a star wild night

of owls and shrieking trees; remember how

children torture them for some primal sin

hysterical with laughter wrapped in dread;

remember how they rejuvenate as dreams –

gentle, furry, quick, undead and many-

legged with multiple obsidian eyes, their

jaws softly venomous, their funnels and

webs and guy lines visible only in fine

drizzle or falling dew or sweat on the

faint moustache of a boy you knew.

Samara

A sycamore seed on the roof outside my window

stuck to slates wet with rain. Little insect wing

if I could enter your vortex of air, I’d be inside that

giant tree in the legend of our childhood, its green

froth of flowers, forked trunk and rope swing. We

queued in the dusk to launch out over beaten

earth, the mill across that foul brook at the town’s

edge spinning and lit like an ocean liner humming

with work. We carved our names in its bark, knowing

our scars would heal and merge with those of the

dead, prising off flakes to find brooched ladybirds.

When we looked up, the branches filled with clouds

or stars or the caged moon. Dry seeds whirled to

chance existence, catching in our hair, our hands

burning on the hemp rope, our knees smirched

by another summer, the tree’s umbel soaring

above us and above that the infinite nearness

of sky with its long climb to heaven.

Limousins

There are the red cattle, woken

from a cave painting, daubed

with red clay into an old religion

waking with rooks to stand

in the pearl-soaked grass.

The red cattle lower their heads

in the sun, walking into their own

shadows, their hooves churning

soft clay in the skim-milk blue

of this September morning.

They watch us, the upright ones

our round faces, our stick bodies

walking through yellow sow thistle

and caked slurry in wet boots

made from their pelts, stepping

inside them, supple gods killing

the time they tread so slowly

and with such certainty. The cows

groan under the great red bull –

daughters and dams of red clay –

their hides flinch under flies, their

genes mapped on a spreadsheet in

the farmhouse with meat and milk

yields, their thoughts slipping to

extinction, evaporating into

the long pasture of the future. They

watch us, the red cattle, walking into

our own shadows, our thoughts flying

ahead of us, our feet slipping in the

wet clay that furnishes us. Amen.

***

A Swallow Maybe was previously published in Visibility, New and Selected Poems, Graham Mort, Seren Books, 2007.

Graham Mort has published ten books of poetry and three collections of short fiction. He is emeritus Professor of Creative Writing and Transcultural Literature at Lancaster University and lives in North Yorkshire. His latest publication is Like Fado and Other Stories, Salt Publishing, February 2021. Read more about Graham on his website, or follow him on twitter.

Claire Jefferson is a landscape painter and poet living in South West France. She writes under the name Stella Wulf and has two pamphlets, After Eden, published in 2018 by 4Word Press  and A Spell In The Woods, an illustrated pamphlet published by Fair Acre Press  in February 2021. Stella is co-editor of 4Word Press. Read more about Claire on her website. Follow her on twitter.