This has some beautiful imagery, and clever twists in language (flit as the
wind!). I'd like it to have a title. I wondered if the lines should be
longer -- I can't explain why it should be so, but it might have something
to do with the sweep of the recounting a life, and that too a life with
roots in the past. I'm not sure about that, though, it's just a thought. I
really enjoyed reading it, and will read it again. Look forward to seeing
more of your work.
Nancy
-----Original Message-----
From: The Pennine Poetry Works [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On
Behalf Of Freda Edis
Sent: Saturday, 16 November, 2002 10:42 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: New Subs: First Wish
Hello Everyone,
I've also been lurking for quite a while, so thought it was about time to
find the courage to post.
The poem's an old, narrative one and I've completely lost perspective on
it, so your comments would be helpful,
Freda
Scatter me broadcast
on the fields by Ely,
under the skies
which levelled my growing.
Country tempers
sent me off to London
at school’s end.
It was soon to be service
for me, your girl,
to knock in some sense.
She said what she meant,
Ma, and packed me,
close as ashes,
into that train.
Clackety-bang,
it went, and smoked.
I survived,
found a husband,
discovered a child
or two. Lit my
piled bonfires,
good old flames,
before rain sizzled
all my embers.
Years upped and downed
in the city smog,
my lungs choked
with its acid and carbon.
That linen drawer
still hides bits
of home. Photos,
photos, photos;
straight-corseted
mother by father,
his pipe askew
under his nose,
prize bullock
behind, white
as flooden death
in a fen winter;
his barns and the house
shed their clapboards
from roof to foundations.
I kept for life
linens and shifts
embroidered by aunts
who worked out their eyes
when lamps were dull.
My older sight
went there, away from
the only streets
you’ve known.
So, swept up
and slapped in a box,
take me back,
not to the church,
where family names,
respectable,
three-deep,
line its walls,
nor to the kitchen,
yeasty and warm
with the Wednesday bread,
of my young home,
but to the flat scapes
where I pined to run,
flit as the wind,
wild and true and live as a child.
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