Ghost Hive
Look up at dusk, the church releases a black shiver
that gathers to a cloud then vanishes.
You think the drone you hear is traffic,
you are wrong, it is a ghost hive.
The moon is their Queen, waxing.
I fill my hands with her pale honey.
I thin myself beside her,
to the blade of a wing, to gold until I am all bee
flying in the shadow of a gravestone.
I lie down and listen to them
murmuring of clover, the loss of orchards, the sweetness of ivy.
A sadness of bees, swarming.
A choir of bees, humming.
A congregation of bees, mourning.
St Pancras Church installed a working hive of 10,000 bees on its roof in 2012. It has now vanished.
North Sea Frequency
Ammonite
He lays his spine against the slippery green,
the sea is out, his bones exposed
and a hospital gown rucked up
into a foam of dirty yellow around his knees.
Pale shapes appear on a dark screen.
He knows this is the stone of him split open.
Pain comes as an ache, as splinters,
he feels it as a hammer strike.
Later he curls up inside the dust of a room
built in layers of old books,
crumbling stacks of paper,
the marbling together of unwashed clothes.
The geological formations of his life
petrifying as he lies in the contours
of his bed. Forgetting all else
but who will discover him.
Genius Floored Anthology 2012
Shortlisted for The Bridport Prize 2011
Excavations
It came with the house.
A lungful of earth coughed up
with the disturbance, the laying of foundations,
the sinking of drains,
and so it was pushed to one side and left.
The leaves taste different up here, sour.
I do not come when my mother calls me.
She wipes the light from the doorway
in her neat capri pants,
her slip-on smile.
I watch her fade between the stalks
as the sky hardens into bone.
I am dragging it up again.
I am pulling it up by the roots of my hair.
First published Poetry Wales 2009
In the garden with John Keats
He said the opposite of rain was a poor man’s blanket
and the opposite of the moon was a bowl of soup.
He spooned it up with his outstretched hand
He licked his fingers and stepped off the grass into the tree.
I shall stay here until the spring he said
Then come back down and throw my rags into the parlour.
The tree is older than my bones he added
On its knees now and aided with a stick.
He begged me spit on the small brass plaque
Bring up a shine with the corner of my best coat.
I promised I would but my hand was a candle stump
I carried it into the porch and bathed it in the sickly light.
He made a hoot like an owl and I crouched down
A dead geranium was bleeding onto the step.
A poet began to read from inside the house
I edged along the wall and peered inside.
A strangled curtain blotted out my eye
When I returned he’d gone again.
I noticed the ink had spread across the lawn
A scratching sound made me catch my breath.
First published The Interpreters House 2014
Contoured Road Map of Exmoor. Popular Edition.
Folded on itself, the texture of lining, gabardine –
an expanding pocket, empty, miles of it.
opening and opening –
laid flat the folds are stained brown like rust
or from a distance wet bracken – blasted, thin wiry hedges –
some kind of bird is trapped here, flapping and panicking –
some kind of weather is trapped here – damping, a cloud
from the 1930’s, pressed onto the page – vapour thin fog expanding –
some kind of man is trapped here – his back to me smoking –
First published in Dream Catcher 2018
See the Competitions page for three more of my poems.
Louise Warren, poet 