Separation – Rachel Lewis

 

In seconds the ice will crack bright on the pond.

You’ll lift a bubble of it in your hand, ungloved.

In minutes the mud will have soaked through our shoes,

And we’ll leave behind the gardens and the bending statues.

In an hour’s time we’ll leave this place I’ve always loved

And in a day anyone might have come or gone.

 

Hot, tight, soft, close, are goodbyes here,

As though intensity could be a kind of glue,

For all the things we’ve promised here, to glue

Them to my promise that next year,

This city, here.

 

 

Rachel is a London-based poet. She was previously a poetry editor for the Mays Anthology and a Young Producer with Poet in the City. Her poetry can also be found on the Poetry Society website, in the Dawntreader and Kindling journals, and unpredictably at live events around London.

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March 17, 2018 by foxglovejournal Categories: PoetryTags: bubble, city, creative, creativity, elements, gardens, goodbye, hand, ice, intensity, leaving, London, mud, nature, poem, Poetry, pond, promise, Rachel Lewis, shoes, time, UK, writing Leave a comment

Ithaca – Rachel Lewis

 

My wife is behind me

And my life before.

The sky lit from inside itself

With golden dying day.

Turning itself,

Turning itself,

And turning again.

We are sailing east

Towards a dawn

That has not yet risen and will not

Til terrors past absolve us

Of having left at all.

Ithaca, sharpening blue

And deepening silver,

My house just one

In our city stretching out the coast.

My father buried there, his dust

Rising in flowers touching heads to dew.

My nurses there, their old hands threading

At baby clothes, sat in sun smiling wrinkled.

Ithaca I can feel you holding back.

Something in me will not come with me.

It will stay murmuring in the cypress,

It will croak with the cicadas at night,

It will live with the snakes in the sand and the gulls on the water.

Promises, winds,

They cannot move a weight of water.

Ithaca I promise

I have never and will never leave you

Even as winds blow me on

Into the rose red grasp

Of this first dawn alone.

 

 

Rachel is a London-based poet. She was previously a poetry editor for the Mays Anthology and a Young Producer with Poet in the City. Her poetry can also be found on the Poetry Society website, in the Dawntreader and Kindling journals, and unpredictably at live events around London.

February 17, 2018February 17, 2018 by foxglovejournal Categories: PoetryTags: animals, city, colours, creative, creativity, dust, elements, fear, flowers, home, Ithaca, journey, London, nature, night, poem, Poetry, Rachel Lewis, sounds, sun, travel, UK, writing Leave a comment

Last One – Rachel Lewis

 

The sun had almost given out that day

I went out late, after the sun had almost

Left us all behind.

 

The first thing I saw was the birch tree,

That had turned such a shade of yellow

As I’d never seen.

 

It was brighter and purer somehow than any green,

And the colour ran sharp through me, set me

Crying as I walked.

 

Blackberries were pouring down. The grass

Was dying in the last of the wintry light.

The streetlight glow began.

 

Willows by the river, and the plane trees,

All said “I know” whenever the wind filled

Their echo chambers.

 

Ducks and geese and magpies live here,

Resourcefully around our houses.

Swans, blackbirds as well.

 

I swung on the kissing gate and realised

I don’t know whether he’s for real, or if he’ll

Ever come back here.

 

 

Rachel is a London-based poet. She was previously a poetry editor for the Mays Anthology and a Young Producer with Poet in the City. Her poetry can also be found on the Poetry Society website, in the Dawntreader and Kindling journals, and unpredictably at live events around London.

February 2, 2018February 2, 2018 by foxglovejournal Categories: PoetryTags: animals, birds, colours, creative, creativity, elements, fruit, gate, glow, light, memory, nature, poem, Poetry, Rachel Lewis, realisation, return, river, senses, sun, trees, wind, writing Leave a comment