Carolyn Oulton

Kent, UK

 

 

Carolyn Oulton is Professor of Victorian Literature and Director of the International Centre for Victorian Women Writers at Canterbury Christ Church University. Her most recent poetry collection is Accidental Fruit (Worple).

 

Poem completed on 25th April 2020

 

 

Through Windows

 

I’ve watched soap melt and smoke

up through my hands in prayer.

Learned to move round a house

like a chess board

where touch is an act,

the cuff of a glove

catches like damage,

rubbish has nowhere to go.

 

A nest has appeared

in my mother’s letterbox.

A blue and yellow bird,

five eggs. My mother

cuts out pictures. Bee-eater,

blue tit. Several times

a day she goes to look,

spreads the word by phone.

 

Three teenagers make a run for it

on a birthday, their houses

maybe six feet apart.

Men in their fifties

start a punch-up

by the fish & chip van.

Apple blossom touches

everything it can.