I wrote this poem last year, after a special moment with my son last Christmas…
Wine It is civilised, beans on toast swished down with non-alcoholic Chardonnay. Generic classical music, Radio 3, Silence from lips often throwing flames and shrapnel. ‘This is awkward’ you say, sophisticated words, and we share a movie moment. You read a poem, and for a time, I feel Bohemian, and I forget that life is not art. © Sarah Drury 2021
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
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
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.
A few years ago I was invited to write and perform some poetry with an ecological theme. I have always been reminded of Wordsworth’s ‘Daffodils’ every time I see a group of wind turbines, and it inspired me to write this poem:
Daffodils
*after 'Daffodils' - William Wordsworth
I wandered lonely as a cloud
that floats on high o’er fracking lines.
When all at once I saw a crowd,
a host of pure white wind turbines.
Besides the mines, beneath ozone
each one a hand of God, alone.
Continuous as the stars which choke,
polluted in the filthiest way.
They stretched in never-ending droves,
fighting for justice on the smoggy day.
Four hundred I saw at a gaze -
spiralling heads in polluted haze.
The wind around them danced but they,
battled in their fight for energy.
An eco-warrior could not be gay,
in a battle for survival of ecology
I gazed and gazed – but could not think
what beauty before me, a carbon-free link.
For oft, when on my bed I lie
In despair or in a futile mood,
they spark a hope within my soul,
of a planet-saving attitude.
And then my heart with gratitude shines
and dances with the wind turbines.
©2022 Sarah Drury
the starry-eyed mermaid 