Poetry
Greensand
You built your home on greensand,
chalk-ridged and sister-hilled,
dreaming over again your family’s
songlines, in bluebell copses
and sunstriped beech woods.
But you shook your roots, tapped
and feathered, trailed them west
to where the air was easter-scented
and you were five years old
again, making miniature gardens
from moss, pushing forget-me-nots
and primroses into stolen egg cups.
In the river-bound valley you hear
trees, vellumed by moss
rise up,
lichen-mottled
to speak to the light,
fern-shrouded
and whispering
in the primal dark.
You find the flowers of your
girlhood in the swerve
of the lanes, sound
out their echoes,begin to gather new songs.
Poems in Performance
I am turning into all the mothers…
Folk Festival, 1982
Echo
*Trigger warning: Pregnancy loss