The Poetry Marathon

An early summer’s day,
Heavy with scent and golden with spilled light.
Lush foliage gleams dew-wet.

In the bright silence, a twig snaps.
Into the clearing,
A small nervous doe,
Ears alert, nose raised to the air,
Guards her fawn.

She watches it step delicately between branches,
Pulling, as it goes, on thickly clustered leaves.
Its wide eyes bright,
Tiny nose damp with dew.

Behind them, a long-neglected path
And at its edge a rusted, crumbling sign
Now slick with moss,
Forgotten, overgrown
Reads: ‘Warning: Chernobyl Exclusion Zone.”

© Anne McMaster 2016

Missing since: May 15, 1970 from Chicago, Illinois
Age: 62 years old
Clothing/jewelry: A cocktail dress and jewelry

She tries the dress on carefully;
Smooths the fabric with careful fingers,
Twists and turns before the glass.
“I like it” she says
And lifts the room with a quiet, shy smile.
“I’ll take it, please. Just wrap it for me here.”
The dress is blue:
A scattering of cornflowers marks the neck and hem.
The colour of her eyes.
I tell her this and watch her smile again.
“My favourite flower” she says.
‘My husband buys them for our anniversary.”
I wrap the dress.
Hide matching gloves inside the heavy folds.
She lifts the package, smiles, and walks away.

© Anne McMaster 2016

Summer morning light
Will slip, like the finest yarn,
Through the tightest grasp.

© Anne McMaster 2016

When I know the time is right, I will inhale.
One careful, sensuous, languorous breath
Drawn within me, deep and slow,
And I will taste the colour of your passing summer’s day.

You turn your face away now, towards the sun,
And seek to shun the memory of me –
Surfeited as you are with this energy, this light.
Carelessly squandering a world so richly green.

But I will breathe once more – much deeper then –
Drawing the colours from the earth and sky.
And the wheel will turn.

(For my sister)

I thank you for the words you did not say.
When grief, so howling harsh and biting deep,
Crippled us both and pulled us low.
Bereavement was something new.

I thank you for your anger and your tears.
Your focus, shunting through old family routines,
Forced action when our hearts ran slow.
Loss was a waking dream.

I thank you for your delicate, fragile fears.
Those ones which, once finally spoken, drew us close;
No bitter language pushing us apart.
Mourning was freshly learned.

I thank you for your loss, your emptiness and grief.
For understanding, then, that we were all we had;
For coming to learn to love me as I was,
And giving me space to love you in return.

© Anne McMaster 2016

Ice had formed when they found her.
No thickened, opaque crust,
But a delicate rime along the river’s edge.
Moving gently in the bitter water,
Tendrils of long dark hair marked the paleness from her skin
And stone shadows filled her cheeks with shade.

“Come with me,” she seemed to sing to those who found her, lonely, there.
“The biting water is nothing to the coldness of the world.”

© Anne McMaster 2016

I rescue cats – and I have many. Of all the moggies who’ve made it to my farm, Moto is the only cat I’ve never managed to tame. This poem describes our relationship *sigh*

She hates me so, this little cat;
Perfectly pawed, she sits and stares
Watching me closely should I move,
She’s ready to race to the nearby hedge.

Perfectly pawed, she sits and stares;
Complete disdain for all I am.
She’s ready to race to the nearby hedge,
Leaving my offers of food and love.

Complete disdain for all I am?
I’ve offered her nothing but shelter and more!
Leaving my offers of food and love,
She glares at me flatly, then flicks her tail.

I’ve offered her nothing but shelter and more!
Her trust has been broken – that is clear.
She glares at me flatly, then flicks her tail
And in a whisper of leaves, she is gone.

Her trust has been broken – that is clear.
It’s too late for me to make amends;
And in a whisper of leaves, she is gone
While I am left sitting – waiting here.

(c) Anne McMaster 2016

Poem 7: Tongue in Cheek

It’s really not the smoking
Or the unhealthy eating
The opening ‘just one bottle’ every night
The random, careless sex
The liberating drugs
The wild driving
The daredevil in you
That’ll bring you down, my friend.

It’s your all-consuming, nagging fear
Your sense of trepidation
Apprehension
Perturbation
Anxiety, foreboding,
Those niggles of disquietude.
Those will get you in the end.

(c) Anne McMaster 2016

Alter – a robot with neural pathways – that can sing.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-36973819

She turns to us in silence,
Her movements Geisha-like in their simple beauty.
Poised. Ready. Empty-eyed.
Her voice is light as a plucked harp.
Delicate as a spiderweb.
The song – like her – is bereft of language;
Yet melody ripples from her curved lips
And soft notes soar
As cameras flash and whirr.
The metal bird without a soul
Sings
In her empty cage.

(c) Anne McMaster 2016

Minims and crotchets
Of hungry black crows
On shorn autumn fields.
Rewriting the music of the season
As they rise and swoop and fall.

(c) Anne McMaster 2016