Inscape   Treading the wild moors for miles A solitary figure gathered leeches That would soak sick bodies, purge Their blood, cleanse, and cure them. Like the leech-gatherer who refused To relinquish his quest and assert His self-reliance, I walked relentlessly Upon endless sand dunes to reach the sea. Water, abundant with…

       Root   At the bottom of the garden In the heart of a blackberry bush Are limbs that do not bleed marrow. Feather bone, iron blood, mind of aether Eyes hold a malignant question The tongue too new to pluck: What was that darkness from which I came? ‘You, apple of the mud…

        Passing a Lake and Noticing There Were Swimmers   The lake-swimmers push out again. Clothes wrapped in plastic on the bank. Is this what freedom is? The night-swim. The moon its own lake. The legs kicking past the waterweed and primrose. Our dream of privateness. I think of them and think of…

        The Birdman   He knew he wasn’t like the parakeets in the guinep tree or the egrets in the mangrove or like the bridge where the river dirtied the sea, at breakwater. He knew how to stay on the ground. His rum cup in one hand, the other pressed over his lips,…

        Music of the Republic   You were with him in his final hours… Carolyn Forché, ‘Last Bridge’   Plato put a spell on you from the beginning. There were other stars buzzing about your brain which will soon be donated to science but he was the one who carried you over the…

        Ablutions   I sat with her body until morning. The blueblack cold mimicked her blueblack skin. I chafed her feet with lemon-scented lotion. The corridors were quiet, a stillness only found early on Sunday mornings, holy and soft. The women will come, their white headscarves, and we will wash her body. Earlier,…

    Dear Sydney Graham   ‘Under your blue hat.’ – W. S. Graham, ‘Dear Bryan Wynter’   I   My feet wear odd socks today, one of yours, One of mine, see how well they go together. Apologies, I’ve come to your funeral late, Dressed oddly and for a night on the town.  …

        A March Nest   A tilt of the light and I wake with a twig in my mouth, building between the shoots and reeds I’d laid in the quick of instinct, at work between the light. Last night I met my mate, who laid her shape to mine and gave my breath…

        I. Avondale House   I wanted to bring you to a place of meaning, meaning, I wanted to bring you somewhere that meant something to me so it could mean something to you. So there we were, halfway to the estate of someone whose name meant nothing to both of us, where…

Photo by Gary Butterfield       The below poems are taken from Clare’s new collection The Mulberry Tree, forthcoming from Shoestring Press in 2021.         The Whispering Land   Out on the fell in the wind-staunch houses, someone will come in from the weather, take off the bluster of their coat, knock…

Photo by Marten Bjork         Premier Inn   You, who have been sought in all the lonely places, (should my mouth be berries and ash) will you come to this locked room? Will you come in dimmed-down dark, a purple sash across the bed? (Should I find myself a cell, a heath instead.)…

        Enviousness   You’ve fought this for so long but comes the time you understand you are second rate no more that brightness with which you shone now worn thin and opaque as milk or rather—how it goes—perhaps it never glowed so brightly that boldness with which you addressed the world has paled…

        Pigeons   ‘Men still live who, in their youth, remember pigeons; trees still live who, in their youth, were shaken by a living wind. But a few decades hence only the oldest oaks will remember, and at long last only the hills will know.’ —Aldo Leopold, On a Monument to the Pigeon,…

        Noah and the catkins   I was sickening for psychosis, more than sickening and you were less than two, just starting to talk and I made a game for you as we walked the woodland path, putting all the catkins into houses under leaves. You tottered about, repeating ’pillar, home. Sometimes that…

   © Gerry Cambridge         Dead man’s beer   They were bundled in a bag for life in the garage, thirty yellow-black tins of Boddingtons like a nest of wasps, their presence stinging his widow. I got the job of retrieving and drinking them. It took me a week to work through the lot…

        Grief is like a miracle   like opening your mouth for water, and finding rain. You stand for days outside the body of a silent church. Snow touches the stillness of the windows and you long for their acceptance, a few tears. You tell yourself the door isn’t closed: it’s open and…

        Flyleaf, Tractatus   I. A flock of birds down where it’s still, where, each morning, fishermen throw their nets into the river, and they flock in the wide fields. The sky is clearing. A rising wind.   II. And downriver down past the birch and the oak trees marked by tides and…

        The shouts   Somewhere, of course, someone is dancing. No, no; not us. Door handles bark and women seem Like babies. Moon. We hopscotch through Prognosticating streetlights, light in their pockets, Drunk and sad. The shouts Prism into snakes of light and snakes On snakes and light again: one day I’ll kiss…

        Happy Birthday   …You clear them away, usher in a future not featuring you. Michael Laskey, ‘Birthday Cards’   While hunting the posh cutlery for my cousin’s annual visit, I found them stowed in your sideboard, opened one to declarations of love next to a wobbly heart drawn by my primary-school hand.…