Tag: Poetry

Daffodils

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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

Ben – a poem about homelessness

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I often bump into a young, homeless man on the streets of Scunthorpe, where I live. He has inspired me to write this prose poem.

Ben, who they kick

Sometimes I see you there, in your muck-stained, stinking cocoon, slashed with the silver-slit blades of wicked men. Glinting knives, cowards, sharks eating goldfish, despicable. “He’ll scrub up well”, my nanna would say, but you don’t have a sink and maybe it’s best if the mirror, mirror on the wall was not mocking you, for then the trajectory of the fall would be the depths you’d fallen.

You had a tent, once, in a field, a 100 percent yield on your bed on the cold, grey, slab. My sleeping beauty. Wanted a bite of the Big Apple and ended in Scunthorpe. If the council doesn’t move soon, doesn’t smooth this wrinkle in our ability to love our own. Stop this ‘them and us’. This ‘dead doesn’t matter to us.’ This ‘filth is nothing to us.’

You smiled once, and the sky turned cerulean, I swear. Broken teeth, yellow and golden brown like the heroin which pulls you out of now, into a never. Your eyes were once peridots and now they are black tourmalines reflecting the expanses of a world which, for you, has no walls. How insecure you must feel, how unwrapped like a gift discarded by an ungrateful child.

I wish I could create a new reality for you, Ben. One where you were not the shit at the end of someone’s shoe. Where food fills your stomach not by a passer-by’s “Are you hungry?”, but by mustering up a mean spag bol in your own little gaff. I cannot imagine being the breath in your lungs, all I can offer is a warm voice and a genuine hope that you will make it through the night.

© Sarah Drury 2022

Tears

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Tears


Don’t want to write
A sad poem,
But my eyes
Refuse to cooperate
With my
Polite smile
And weather worn
Bravado.


Feelings are seeping out
Of closets
Where I thought
I had sealed doors with
Art and beautiful music.
Thinking I had grown beyond
The tears.
But I hadn’t.
And haven’t.


I saw a homeless man
Yesterday.
His face a map of pain
And dejection.
And today the black girl
On TV,
With eyes that
Sold a charity,
And broke me.
And my tears feel like
Insignificance.
Like a first world indulgence.
Privilege.
But I miss you.

Sarah Drury, March 2021

Glass Jar

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GLASS JAR

Sometimes I wish that
hearts were like spiders,
and I could trap yours
in a pretty glass jar.
I would gaze all day,
contemplating reasons you should stay,
and we would sleep silently together,
under a duvet of opalescent stars.

Arachnids move so fast.
And I don’t want you to
move at all.
I am so tired of loving from a distance.
You are oblivious to the longing
in the rise and fall
of my half heart hope.
I want to gaze in awe.
As you weave your spun silk webs,
to grace the gardens of my metaphor.
Mine only.

I would covet your little glass house,
cup my loving hands around the
fragile glass.
Sense the lukewarm flesh and bones
of my unrequited, taboo lass.
No escaping my love,
in your little, crystal prison.
The fireflies would cry by the dark
of the night,
and the moon would whisper secrets,
when the trusting sun had risen,
and no-one would hear,
but the universe would listen.
And our hearts.

Sarah Drury

Stacey

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My name is Stacey
I am hard as the knuckles
on my father’s hand
When his gold sovereign ring
kisses my lying teeth
With a glint of what he calls
tough love

And his Doc Marten feet
dance on my nail-hard flesh
Painting green and purple
masterpieces with
splashes of red
A canvas of abuse but
he says he loves me
And love is precious

And his eyes cut into
my heart like a surgeon
nonchalantly considers
a newly deceased cadaver
I have to look away
or iron palms will smart
my punch bag cheek
But love is like that

I think my life is tough
But at the end of the day
it’s for my own good
My father says
I’m a fucking little bitch
But he will break me
and make me

But he’s birthed a monster
with his fists of fire
and his hands of hate
and his feet of fury
and his temper of turmeric

I am Stacey
I am hard as the knuckles
on my father’s hand
And I am as broken
as the glass greenhouse
where my father
shouldn’t throw stones

©2020 Sarah Drury

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