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Winter Solstice 2022

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Hope everyone had a happy solstice and Yule, and wishing you a very merry Christmas with everything beautiful for 2023! Here’s a little poem I wrote! 


The sun has slipped below
the monarchy of the moon
its cool, harsh Winter glare
clings on, a moment longer

From here, the days have turned
The daylight stretches out its
icy respiration, Pagan gods
and goddesses scatter

blessings on the crackling
mirror-glaze Earth
the sparking lanterns
lifting jovial voices into

balmy, freeze-breath skies.
We merrily turn our faces 
upwards, praise the solstice
pray for hope reborn. 

© Sarah Drury 2022

Ophelia (1910)

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after John William Waterhouse

              Be thou as chaste as ice:       as pure as snow:
    your purity a catechism.
                 
 Flowers grace your palms, in repose.
                          Get thee to a nunnery:
                                     a virgin?      Can we know?
                                     
 Anoint your flame hair -
                                thou shalt not escape
                                     calumny:    your visage:
                   
your chaste lips, a phantom kiss
                   cheeks smarted rose with denial.

                                The trees are vessels of your        sorrow.

                                                 Ophelia,     love is a dead Hawthorn. 


Copyright © Sarah Drury 2022


Waterhouse, J.W. (1910) - Ophelia 
Shakespeare, W. - Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 1 (Hamlet to Ophelia

39 Degrees

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39 degrees

 

Today I could cook my breakfast

on the pavement, spitting there,

between the doc ends and

discarded cheap-lager cans. Save

 

on the energy bills, al fresco

cuisine – dine with the homeless. The

eggs would gaze up at me like that

woman’s breasts sweating in her

 

Lycra, skimpy top. The sun has

hit pasty limbs hanging from

cheap shorts, chests bared to

the air – Men thinking that is

 

what we women want to see, as

we point, and ponder unbaked

baguettes. 39 degrees and we

are pink cuts on a butcher’s slab.

 

 

Skin at 1 a.m.

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I have a teenager, he is 15 nearly. My husband (his dad) died when my son was 3 1/2, and I was there while they turned off the life support. It hit me hard and left me a bit neurotic. Every night, when my son is sleeping, I have to check that he is still alive. It is a deep fear of losing him. I wrote a poem…

Skin at 1 a.m.

Won’t be long now. Soon
you will be too big to be
holding hands with me.
I see beyond the tree

outside the window. 
The sky, infinite – must be 
a new moon as the stars
muse at the aloneness. 

I check you are breathing. 
Brush fingers onto your 
cheek. You wince and 
I know you are sleeping.

It is a strange fixation, 
fearing death in life. I 
feel your palm is hot and
your blood is warm and

you breathe. I am in 
my sanctuary, the rhythms 
of your chest rising
and falling, bringing me 

peace. 




©2022 Sarah Drury, all rights reserved

Milo, aged 2 1/2

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I bought some new watercolours last night, White Night brand, think they are Russian, and am well impressed with them. They were reasonably priced, and are professional quality whole pan paints, with rich colours and highly pigmented.

White Nights watercolour paints, whole pans.

Anyhow, I was inspired to paint this portrait of my son, aged 2 1/2. pencil and watercolour on A4 Aquafine paper.

Milo, aged 2 1/2