Hericium
If when we die, the soul attaches itself to something half-alive,
mine will settle for forest rot,
drip its thousand spines to a pale spill.
Woodland does not pause at loss,
it lives through its buried —
another hounded fox, the wrong red.
Somewhere, a horse chestnut’s falling pulse
and in the damp, stars yawn into autumn.
Everything and nothing in this wood.
When I become impossibly light, appear as wax,
let foragers steal my ghost-meat home,
prepare a meal of it, slow as winter.
from Rootstalk (first published in The Rialto)
Two women sit for breakfast
comfortably quiet. Between them,
something will move; steam from the oats,
or light, painting a bowl of plums.
Whatever was promised last night can wait
until the table’s clear
of honey-licked spoons.
There are so many ways to be gentle.
Outside, the morning turns to its clouds,
but for them, the hour threads itself golden.
Let them sit a while longer;
there are always oranges to peel.
I’d like to know how many years we’ll have.
first published in fourteen poems
Halves
When the sea had me by the waist,
I cupped my hands between my legs
and pushed out my daughter.
She could not know then, as I licked
the caul from her scalp, that men
would rate her as rare leather,
boats sag their bellies of netting
for skin which might sieve
a woman;
the way her father had angled me
from my pod, turned me out of fur
to boast a girl.
I carried my child as a stone,
could never have seen us now,
mother and pup, the two halves
of a mussel shell, dipping
the shy grey of our backs
under foam and back into rumour.
first published in Ambit