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CAUGHT IN THE NET 120 - POETRY BY GERALDINE GREEN
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|
Listen to larks rising,
pulling scent of thyme from earth,
their song falling like water.
Should you ever get bored with tormentil,
Meadow Browns or harebells, raise your eyes,
look at horses on the horizon.
from;
Limestone outcrop, Birkrigg |
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CONTENTS
1 - BIOGRAPHY
2 – POETRY
Salt Road into the Bay
Limestone outcrop, Birkrigg
me and janine
We just drove
Crossing the Prairie
Prayer from the Flint Hills
Skiathos Old Port
Smelling of blue
gum
Extract from Poem of a Mole Catcher’s Daughter
In all that wide ocean |
3 - AFTERWORD
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1 – BIOGRAPHY: Geraldine Green
UK poet Dr. Geraldine Green
is a writer, freelance creative writing tutor and mentor and visiting lecturer
at The University of Cumbria.
She has had four collections published.
The Skin and Passio Flarestack
Pubications, Poems of a Mole Catcher’s
Daughter under the pseudonym of Katie A Coyle by Palores Publications. Her
latest collection, The Other Side of the
Bridge by Indigo Dreams, formed part of her PhD in Creative Writing: “An
Exploration of Identity and Environment through Poetry.” Geraldine was a
contributor to a book on therapeutic writing - Writing Works.
Her next collection Salt Road
will be published summer 2013, also by Indigo Dreams.
www.indigodreamsbookshop.com/#/geraldine-green/4565286878
Geraldine’s poetry has been widely anthologised in the UK, US and Italy and
translated into German and Romanian. She has recently given a talk at the
Lawrence Durrell Centenary Celebrations in Corfu and presented a Paper on the
works of John Clare and Aldo Leopold at The South West Texas Conference,
Albuquerque. Geraldine, who frequently performs her poetry in the US, read at
WoodyFest,
www.woodyguthrie.com/
on an extended poetry trip to Oklahoma and Kansas, July 2012.
You can listen to her reading on
www.kpfa.org/archive/id/81889
She is an Associate Editor of Poetry Bay
www.poetrybay.com
Geraldine lives in South Cumbria, on the shores of Morecambe Bay, where she grew
up. Her twin passions are nature study and poetry.
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2 - POETRY
Salt Road into the Bay
Late afternoon, I walk
alongside the mud flats
of Morecambe Bay -
the bay
the flats
the tide that swings
its way in and out -
different! Different.
I walk out into wind,
salt & flat-caked mud
baked white in the sun,
tread among samphire,
spiked as yet unplumped
shoots of bright green
small pockets of prayer
parcels of ozone and ask:
are you really samphire,
that bright jewel of
Shakespeare,
picked, plucked,
remembered from Lear?
And into the salt and the sea
and into the tide and the flats
I follow the footprints: trainers,
knobbled patterns in salt,
horse's hooves
branding sky
into flesh,
salt into sand,
me into them,
us into us all.
A caterpillar tyre
a shrimper’s tractor
curving round and out -
I curve like that
eating samphire
as if I'm its juice
as if I'm its flesh
as if I'm crushed
into samphire
green.
I pause.
take breath
take in the sweep and sway
before the next wash of tide.
Limestone outcrop, Birkrigg
You can sit on any
of these limestone outcrops
watching Meadow Browns land on
harebells Alpine ladies slippers
or tormentil, listen to the wind
shushing bracken
as you sit sheltered, dog to one side
panting, waiting for a stick
to be thrown.
Listen to larks rising,
pulling scent of thyme from earth,
their song falling like water.
Should you ever get bored with tormentil,
Meadow Browns or harebells, raise your eyes,
look at horses on the horizon.
Sea-Jay or shire mare, Annelise,
or white ones
folding over mudflats and marram
as the tide licks its way
into gulleys and channels.
Don’t be fooled,
it may look as though it’s creeping -
each wave searching
for a foothold
but underneath lies its venom,
quicksand and currents.
Watch it
rush in under the viaduct at Plumpton,
or sit near the hide at the south end of Walney
when it empties the Bay,
returns to the Irish Sea.
me and janine
vickers shipyard, barrow-in-furness, 1973
legs swinging and us licking ice creams
on the submarine dock our platform shoes
cool and wonderful and the men whistling
and shouting hey love, gi'e us a lick!
and when we turned and gave them you know a
sidelong look they laughed but me and janine
we knew they didn't mean anything by it they
were just joshing so anyhow we sat there
with our ice creams trickling down the side
of the cones golden and crisp the flakes falling
onto our mini skirts and we knew we'd have to
go back in soon but the day was warm it was warm
it was summer we were seventeen and we looked good
and we knew it and we loved it when the sailors came --
foreign submariners from argentina israel the middle east
and russia and us listening to their funny accents
and they came
here to vickers to board their subs
and our own being built alongside revenge
and resolution and them going on patrol
in the baltic or the pacific and me and janine
dreaming of smuggling ourselves on board
to wake up in a foreign port somewhere --
which was just about when the hooter would go
and we had to go back in to our dusty offices
on the sub dock with
the sun blocked out
and snopake and pens and a deep pile of papers
with typos to correct.
We just drove
It was a night of no moon
a night of fresh earth
it was night
and we just drove.
You pointed out Scotland
under a thin strip of light
we could see Criffel
across the Solway.
We just drove
there was mist
there was silence
there was fruitfulness in the silence
we drove through it all
the sheep, the night of no moon, the grasses
we drove through it
turned the fells into commons of prayer
turned them into our road home
turned the headlights off
bumped over the cattlegrid
over the little white road across the fells.
Crossing the Prairie
There goes green corn
fierce as tornadoes
her cougar skin rippled
her bright eyes dazed with
dust-storms and headlights
she crosses the prairie on
her greencorn song of misery
upright as telegraph poles
lining the freeways.
Boy whistles wind
wind comes running
wind combs her back
of greengold corn
for a hundred miles
combs greencorn hair.
Nightstars crackle
moonwafer breaks open.
At dawn, a deluge of buffalo
at dawn, their ghosts cross the plain
at dawn, their notorious herd of steam
their outrageous breath
their sweat and blood
their sinews and bones.
These ghosts of buffalo.
These man-haunting bison.
Ghost bison pound earth
their hooves the pestle
this land their mortar.
Look! a city catapults
itself across the sky:
a wave of cities
a deluge of buffalo
a rivering of ghosts.
Grass cracked moons
grass tricky as coyote
grass spilling greengold
handsome as cougar
moon mirror cracks
buffalo stampede
into dust
into headlights.
Prayer from the Flint Hills
You are the prairie at sunset
the crackle of tree crickets
drawing heat into sky
the prickle of corn
swift beating of hawkwings
you are the distant horizon
the deer that pauses
white tail flicking
its fawn by its side.
You are the hush of dusk
as it falls onto tall grass
the buffalo's steady gait
is you beating heart
you are the prairie fire
flickering
licking edges
of pasture, making sweet
the new grass.
You are the badger
below ground
the stars that gave
the Kaw their dances
the sacred water hidden
in the folds of these hills.
You are the breath of the Prairie
breathing its way into night
distant snort of buffalo
over there
on the horizon
sharp screech
of a night bird
embers of sumac
like the Kansas sunflower
you live in the movement
of the south wind
that calls Kansas its home.
Skiathos Old Port
Wherever I turn, wherever I stand,
You will kindle in me only one
desire:
to return to Greece.
- ‘The Soil of Greece’ George Drosinis
The whole village pours itself
its families fishing nets its hunger
poets and hope into the sea.
Farmers carry their meagre
loads
down to the boatmen
by the harbour, where
the Aegean sings itself to sleep
where stars’ phosphorescence
lightens the horizon.
Morning pulls itself open
cats slink uphill
to the churchyard.
In the village square
the fountain
murmurs
its prayer to old women
clothed in black -
their hands clutched
by grandchildren, who
dip their fingers
into the pool
around the fountain
as though
into the font
of holy water
beside the church door
before their grandmothers
drop a coin into the box
for offerings, light a candle to
Panteleimon
Paraskevi
Pelagia
sniff the incense
and kiss the glass
that hides the Saints.
Gulls preen themselves
ready for evening
when they'll flock to the harbour
perch on wings and silver-
painted railings, wait for scraps
thrown overboard from boats.
Old men beat kalamari against
rocks,
their faded denims rolled
their tough, brown hands
and arms still strong enough
to pull on oars, they sit
outside the Cafeneion, listen
to the soft click clack of their
amber kombolois
remember themselves as boys
remember sons and grandsons
gone to the mainland
gone to America,
gone, like the picture brides
who, in nineteen twenty five
left Skiathos and landed
on New York’s Ellis Island.
Blood of this place gone now
fish through torn nets.
Smelling of blue gum
That smell when a Eucalyptus tree is cut;
when a ladder is propped against it,
when a saw is blading through barked flesh
and blue gum trickles down.
Two hands pull on the new white rope,
blue gum sticks to air. I can see it.
Today the sky has been asleep,
tomorrow the moon will be full of blue gum.
Extract from Poem of a Mole Catcher’s Daughter
If I
stand here
hearing
only
the
wind
blown in
on the
back
of the
green
Irish Sea.
If I
close my
eyes
hold my
breath
count to
ten
will I see Granda’ Fitz’s
brother, Joe?
Hear him
making up
poems
as he strode
along the
lane
to
St Bees?
An old top hat
he’d found
in the hedgerow
pushed back
on his forehead
a whistle
in his hand
his eyes mad
as a blackbird’s
caught in the rain.
His hands fluttering
like birds
his hair listening
to the wind
his mouth
opening and closing
like a baby bird’s.
His worms are words
his caterpillars are
rhymes and starlings
his poems a way
of letting jackdaws
in his head
out for a while
before they
lock him up again
in the workhouse.
Whose fingers are these typing?
Whose words?
In all that wide ocean
I
In all that wide ocean arms were outstretched to embrace
the stones
we read were polished black oblong shapes
were on them
we wanted to read the shapes &
tried so
hard
but
couldn’t
once when stones had no shape and we had no shape
we could read them the oblong
polished black
stones and we tried so very hard
golden fish large as dolphins
swam in the sea that had no shape
when we had no shape and the stones oblonged
a golden fish swam rescued by a pelican
raised
by a pelican's beak dropped into the wide
wide ocean
two golden fish swam together
wove strange oblong shapes
into songs
and we cried together.
II
In the cathedral, the cathedral I visited last night in my dream
in the cathedral it was dark.
I remember only the grounds that wandered with me in my dream.
Did i dream the grounds?
Did i dream the cathedral?
But the golden fish were real
and the stones with the oblong shapes polished black
at the edge of the wide ocean
and I write this down because once we were the stones
and once we can be the cathedral
and once we are the two golden fish
rescued in a pelican's beak
we will know what the shapes mean.
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4 - Afterword
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