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Subject:

Re: New Subs: First Wish

From:

Lynn Owen <[log in to unmask]>

Reply-To:

The Pennine Poetry Works <[log in to unmask]>

Date:

Sun, 17 Nov 2002 09:43:50 -0000

Content-Type:

text/plain

Parts/Attachments:

Parts/Attachments

text/plain (109 lines)

Hello and welcome.
I like the story line and "country tempers" hooked the start for me. Some
very good stuff in here, but for me ( as a reader with a short attention
span) it's a touch too wordy.
Lynn
----- Original Message -----
From: "Freda Edis" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Saturday, November 16, 2002 5:11 PM
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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