A Dragon's Egg Read online

  © 2011 SUE MORGAN

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means—graphic, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or information storage and retrieval systems—without the prior written permission of the author.

  ISBN: 978-1-908282-94-1

  Published by ORIGINAL WRITING LTD., Dublin, 2011.

  Some of the poems featured in this book have been published in Static Poetry Volumes I, II and III, The Poetry Map (NI Arts Council), Te Best of Writing for All 2010 and online in HaikuJ, Every Day Poets and Writing4All.

  It is the first time they have appeared together in a collection.

  A DRAGON’S EGG

  Long ago you put the stone egg

  into my hand. Turned again

  to paddle ten toes in Stickle Tarn

  giving your small child’s smile.

  Pink and grey, laid by Lakeland mountain.

  I have it now, held in the nesting palm

  of a winter hand. A touch-stone.

  Comfortable, sustaining even,

  as I close five fingers about its enduring curves,

  hold in my mouth the rounded feel

  of Earth’s chronicle, ready

  to entrust with subtle kiss

  memories that belong to me alone.

  Worn smooth, soothing. Solid.

  My granite talisman against

  decay, I try to hatch you

  on the wing of warm thought,

  a sleeping dragon that waits.

  DOODLES (MADE BY CLARKS)

  Blue shoes.

  Beautiful blue canvas shoes,

  that once enclosed tiny toes, hidden

  from mother bird pecks, my kisses

  which would have you an infant yet.

  Blue shoes.

  Happy shoes that splashed

  the water’s edge at Mawgan Porth.

  Shrieked surprise at sand-shift under

  unsuspecting feet that took tumbles

  and danced your Humpty Dumpty jig.

  Shoes that scaled the heights

  of chain-wire fenced adventure, gathered

  solar system gobs of clay from muddy puddles,

  then toddled you straight to childhood.

  ROUNDING THE CIRCLE

  My infant knees bend, scrape their softness

  on millstone’s hard-hewn flags,

  the gritty pavements of Oxford Street,

  chalked ‘a’s and ‘o’s in pink and yellow,

  pastel against your brown skin, taught well in Trinidad

  before you came to live next door.

  I try to copy but my large drawn shapes have gaps.

  I make a fist and try harder, tongue between teeth,

  pressing down until chalk crumbles into dust.

  Effort leached at once

  by East Lancs rain, wet

  we go inside for cheese on toast.

  I the teacher now, hand out pristine sheets

  and colouring pens to small hands

  that still slip and slide in the struggling.

  R IS FOR REMEDIAL

  On my first day of teaching

  the Head took me to a room

  at the end of the corridor,

  the one with peeling paint at the edges

  and old yellow sellotape stuck to the windows.

  I had a view of the deck-access flats,

  the kids’ view was me.

  They gave me 1R but never said what the R was for.

  There were two Waynes and a Wendy

  who wouldn’t take off her coat.

  Wayne One banged his head on the desk

  towards an upturned nail at the corner.

  Wayne Two asked if it would snow,

  and the kids looked at me.

  First staff meeting, I asked for coloured pencils

  ‘You’re teaching History, not effing Art’

  was the official reply.

  So I bought a pack from Woolworths,

  with a sharpener and some paper.

  We drew pictures of the pyramids

  and stuck them over purple paint

  and the kids just smiled.

  By the end of five years we’d covered the walls,

  It’d snowed twice and the nail

  was truly hammered into wood.

  The kids laughed as they left me standing there,

  Wendy, still with her coat on.

  CROSSING THE LINE

  You sat on my steps on a Saturday night.

  I, back from the Knowles,

  you, rice-flail in hand, arms by your side,

  pain pooling in the knuckle duster

  which shone under street lights.

  ‘Can I have a drink, Miss?

  ‘Coffee,’ I said, ‘nothing more!’ as

  I opened the door and crossed

  a threshold to moral dilemma.

  Whilst the kettle boiled

  you watched Match of the Day.

  I made a bundle of your things,

  wrapped in the bag I hid under the sink.

  Gently, I washed blood from your hands

  like a mother, and felt like Mary Magdalene.

  You waved goodbye when you knew

  the coast would be clear,

  that drink-induced sleep, and time,

  blessed you and protected you,

  keeping your Mum from harm. Just for today.

  TIMES TABLES

  Raymond didn’t do maths

  or, so he said.

  He didn’t do art or music either.

  Illiterate, was what they wrote. But,

  full of entrepreneurial zeal,

  Raymond found his niche

  running rent boys

  in the Witton Park flats.

  He could calculate when the dole

  was due and how many times

  boys would have to turn table

  to keep his Mum from the street.

  In the second term of Fifth year

  the EWO dragged him back into school

  giving enough time before the Easter leaving

  to practice how to write her eulogy.

  JAPANESE SHORT FORM

  Sunshine spears

  slice field daylight

  into neat portions

  x

  Snake sheds its skin

  on hard stone wall

  diamond reminder

  x

  Iced winter rain

  drips stars on the dustbin

  galvanised sparkle

  x

  Nested courgettes

  wear bright summer bonnets

  paradise salad

  Talking to strangers

  red wine in hand

  now we are brothers

  x

  The black rat snake

  unwinds his night body

  greets the sunshine

  x

  Ragweed stars

  bright edge of the meadow

  blind horses walk by

  x

  Heat haze rises

  over bubbling tarmac

  walking on toffee

  x

  Peeling potatoes

  view from the window

  a skinned sun sets

  DORNOCH 1989 – A COLD WINTER

  Beneath quilted hills in hibernation

  the Old School House at Rearquhar

  lay just as it should, at slumber.

  Your father’s dreams flowing

  through Èibhleag’s black waters

  to season summer gathered wood.

  We walked the bridge, talked

  and threw sticks into snow-melt,

  words to fashion a future,

  forever frozen in clear air.


  Such a welcome, as warm as lambswool,

  cossetting quietly without show.

  That below -stairs hideaway bedroom,

  all mellow wood and creaking sounds

  that sloped away with the ceiling.

  Then, cloutie dumpling, a greeting

  that reached down the years,

  to pass to generations yet to swell the room.

  You looked at me and then there was only us

  and I knew that I could have stayed forever.

  THE KING’S HIGHWAY

  What a drive!

  We jump in the car hired at the airport,

  head down the King’s Highway,

  windows wide open,

  the ‘aircon’ won’t work.

  Roasting.

  Driving to Aqaba.

  Pirated road songs blare

  from worn out cassettes.

  ‘Hotel California’ loud as you please

  as we speed to the Gulf

  on the squat open road.

  The sea of the desert,

  a black tarmac slick

  that moves trucks from the south

  to the souks in the north

  of Amman.

  Rusting wrecks to the left of us,

  a donkey carcass to the right,

  wind grabs our hair by its roots,

  watery fear grips our bellies,

  trucks tear over the hill

  headed straight

  for

  us.

  Five in a row,

  hurtling to be first

  down the slopes

  of Abraham.

  Playing chicken with no brakes!

  Skewered and kebab’d.

  Fried,

  on that highway to hell.

  YIN AND YANG AT DUNDRUM BAY

  My edges touch your edges.

  Naked knees on the hard crust of sand

  Where the sea spills into warm waters,

  A crochet fringe along the shore

  Where my fingers touch your fingers,

  Coral tentacles which finger the void.

  Your love, which is for me,

  Lies against me and through me,

  Washes over me,

  An ocean that swallows the day.

  A purple sunset spills its colours into rain,

  Spreads its wings across the sky for me.

  My mind slowly edges towards your mind,

  Feels the frilled rim of your life,

  Your edges have edges that fill mine.

  THE COURTYARD AT ST JOHN’S

  When I next see you I will kiss

  The corners of your mouth with my eyes

  And hand to you sweet lilies of the field,

  Grown on white cliffs in mid-winter.

  I will build a house for you

  On the hillsides of Ayios Yeorgias,

  Big enough to hold your dreams

  And feed you with fat, warm-scented figs

  From the courtyard at St John’s.

  I will let red hibiscus fall

  From behind my ears

  And let sounds of the sea

  Wash over my shoulders.

  I will hand to you

  The brown paper parcel of my days

  Spent in long waiting

  And give you yesterday’s news,

  Of how the Wall in Berlin has fallen.

  THE CONVENT BATH

  Bleak born, ill born,

  born of no morn,

  no mourning aloud.

  Taken from her turned out womb

  and dashed across the stone.

  A rabbit at its rut would have more

  charity than you, who forced yourself

  in spite of God, on Brides of Christ.

  The bath, deep, so deep,

  to mask the final cries and shrieks of birthing.

  Burning, bawling from your ‘fires of hell’

  and in their calling shout your name.

  The edge, the lip, so large,

  and curved, just so,

  to catch the skull head on,

  make haste the journey.

  Buried in the bloodied rags beyond the sacred wall.

  Did you anoint with sacramental oils and intercede?

  Or turn your back and leave those nuns to pray?

  TUTANKHAMEN

  Climb slowly

  down

  stone step

  after stone step,

  swallowing time,

  backwards.

  Through dust’s darkness

  into the tomb.

  Alone with the Boy King

  in his carved sarcophagus.

  He lies patiently

  waiting for time’s end.

  Silence separates behind glass screens,

  reverberates with after-life awe.

  Staring, I don’t blink,

  but he wins.

  Stone step

  up

  stone step,

  back to the light.

  In the closing of a

  blind eye I see the future.

  LATE SUMMER MOURNES

  Blue gentian

  dripped

  by liquid sky.

  Lively yellow bindi,

  button with no name,

  brilliant sun pixel of beauty.

  Lay you back in the warmth

  let little jewels fall,

  blanket you with dotted joy.

  Spotted brilliance

  to cover you through winter.

  Peel off and swallow brightness

  until the spring equinox is come again.

  MORNING PRAYER

  Mystery of the mountains

  concealed behind your night shroud

  let the soft illuminating light

  of the newly born sun

  part your veil

  and may you salute my dreams.

  GRIEF

  Oh, binding cord of spirit,

  Silver skein of sorrow,

  Twist like a girdle round this frame.

  Penetrate the weft

  And weave into my soul

  But do not leave me.

  EVOLUTION

  I am Fish Eye.

  It seems you dreamed me alive

  and I swallowed the rainbow of that dream.

  See, I am black and white duality,

  polarity born of ancient time.

  Truth walks the lie of my fish feet,

  fins that feel for patterns of new life.

  So know that as you circle

  in your shades of grey

  the all-seeing Fish Eye

  sees you.

  DEEP IN THOUGHT

  Shadows scud across your countenance

  Like black sighs from a Dark Lord.

  What depths of despair can I not see

  behind the flat summer calm of your face?

  GALWAY GRIEF

  I spied a woebegone sight on the shores of Galway Bay.

  A single file of women, black clad ravens all,

  sloughed along a rise above the sea,

  so stark in summer sunshine.

  A coffin of a man was lifted high

  and carried on salt breezes.

  Grieving waves below could hold no more

  and sprayed their sad lament

  on slabs of solemn limestone.

  Seagulls screeched and wheeled

  in arcs of life, as if to chase away

  this grisled silhouette of death.

  THE RING!

  Its lack shone like a beacon on her finger.

  The third on the left, or second from the right,

  dependant on which way you looked.

  That empty digit sore lacked love’s external pulse.

  Wanted! A fat, shiny diamond from the mine at Kimberley,

  seen as a child in the days before we knew

  that rivers of blood carried sparkle and greed.

  So pained that that finger was bare,

  her daydreams drew initials, joined and
filigreed,

  pink ink at the back of her school-books.

  She walked past Weir’s, sneaking glances askance,

  with a quickening of feet that would have preferred

  to dawdle and tread carefully over carat and clarity, and sheer size.

  When the day came though, it was perfunctory.

  She chose her own ring and paid from her purse.

  An opal with little white diamonds, circled around

  like seven vestal virgins, mocking her need to comply.

  As soon as she could, it was slipped from the finger.

  Her first born, here early, had skin like thin tissue

  which tore in the breeze, and a hard stone that’d cut

  was nothing that couldn’t be kept, in the earthenware pot

  that sat on the shelf in her kitchen.

  SIREN SONG FOR THE OLD MARINER

  Death swells towards you.

  Pneumonia’s cold tide washes,

  Floods your beating heart,

  Steals away your warmth.

  Caught in a final net of no tomorrows.

  Brittle air breathes the misted

  Number of your days.

  The dumb echo of my tears

  Sounds your death knell.

  Colour seeps and greyness falls

  But quiet, like the mermaid’s caul.

  ST BARTHOLOMEW’S MEMORY

  I passed Paddy Doyle at the crossroads today,

  at the wheel of his old ‘Grey Donkey’.

  There was but a single tooth in his mouth

  and a shock of hay at his temple.

  I raised my hand in a greeting

  but he didn’t wave back, why should he?

  He’s been there as long

  as the ancient yew and the old Celtic cross,

  both visible over his shoulder.

  FAIR ISLE

  Needles click-clack, chattering tongues,

  fingers knit one, purl one, knit two together.

  Worn-down points exposed as silver tips

  in blurred motion, too fast for my eyes.

  All the while the conversation spins and weaves

  its spells, wound lightly round gnarled fingers.

  Words rise in the tip-tap cadence

  of women’s secrets, wrapped firmly beneath curled knees.

  Stretched hands in pairs receive skeined wool

  with an unwinding and rewinding of tales

  told tightly into coloured balls, binding

  life’s patterns in intricate word melodies.

  Itchy wool that seals out rain and wind

  with words to keep young ears warm.

  CUTTING TURF

  The sod of our land has a deep soul

  And holds its stories close.

  Ages pass, unbidden but not forgotten.

  Turf bonds with its tales.

  Strike a match and light the fire.

  Bring bread and cheese,

  Fresh salmon from Loch Erne.

  Come stay a while, take a sup to drink,

  Chat about your day and tell me again

  The feats of Ulster’s kings and their ways.

  Let not our hospitality be blown away on brash winds,

  Let mellow words carry far on turf’s sweet smoke.