Tag: poem

The last rose

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~there is beauty in death

I remember seeing an old episode of ‘Tales of the Unexpected’. It is a British show based on the stories of Roald Dahl. The show ran between 1979 and 1988. This particular episode, ‘The Sound Machine’, is set in a sunny suburban summer before the Second World War. Mr. Klausner develops a box which amplifies the tiniest sound. It records the screams of flowers as they are being cut. I was 11 years old and very disturbed by the idea of plants feeling pain! This memory stayed with me. I am now 55 and always feel sad when I see flowers in a vase. Although they are beautiful, I am much happier to see them in the garden.

I wrote this poem as I was gazing at a vase of roses on my living room table. The blooms had wilted and there were petals on the table, shriveled and pitiful. A saddening sight.


Rose

How proud was this rose. Its deep
pink petals were velvety and rich.
My hand brushed over a swathe of
suitors hurling bouquets at my door.

The gerberas, all sunshine yellow, resonate
with optimistic women; yoga mats and chai lattes.
They cling to life, fronds of petals falling.
The table littered with near death.

Now the rose shatters, though my
gentle hands cup its parch-dry petals.
As though love can bring back the broken,
like Jesus and the old bones of Lazarus.

The deep pink has faded to the lips of a
dying woman. She waters the garden
every evening, yet still the flowers
shut their eyes.

©2022 Sarah Drury














A Bluebird in 8 Ways

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A BLUEBIRD IN EIGHT WAYS
                           ~ After Wallace Stevens
 
I

A poet is a bluebird
who drizzles the sky
with indanthrene songs 

II

I am making words
out of the bluebird’s tongue,
littered on the paper 
like a rejection letter.

III

The bluebird looks at me
with its reticent eye - 
wants to sprinkle lies
in the blackbird’s ear.

IV

I have no time for cheats.
Bluebirds are full of infidelity,
wagging their sweet 
little tails at the worms.

V

I know a fine song
if it licks my heels.
I smile and my breast heaves
at the fortissimo.

VI

When the bluebird flies away
the chicks’ chasm-jaws 
snatch at a stopped watch.

VII

The snow dusts the blue wings.
Makes snow angels on the ice.
I fall, my womb a pomegranate.

VIII

I never did fit in a box.
Too big dreams for a small forest.
No blackbirds with carbon plumage.
I want diamonds. 

Copyright © Sarah Drury 2022


Wallace Stevens, (1954), 'Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird' from The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens. New York. Random House.


Images by krstnwatts0 and Johnny Gunn from Pixabay

Blackpool Tower

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Many, many years ago I had a very frightening experience. I was young – around 14 – and my life pretty much revolved around playing the cello. I joined an orchestra in Lincoln, which is a fair drive away from my hometown. An older man, must have been sixty-plus, used to give me a lift there. There were usually several of us, but this one night I was alone with him on the journey home. He stopped his car and made a very inappropriate move. It was dark, and he had pulled his car over to the side of the desolate country lane. I screamed and went ballistic, which must have taken him aback, as he quietly drove me home.

That is the backstory for this poem. Blackpool Tower is a metaphor, but I won’t explain and ruin the images your mind will weave as you read!

The layby takes me back 
to the lanes not lit up 
like Blackpool Tower, where I fell, 
illuminated by blown bulbs.

I should not have been hitching rides
with dirty men, him telling me 
we couldn’t make babies 
with his thing choked in rubber.

His death would be better.
I would prefer a cadaver.
Stiff fingers, curled, like questions.

His wife.
Evenings, he slipped into her.
The usual in, out, in, out.
Nothing in it for her. 
Never is.


Copyright © Sarah Drury 2022

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