Paul Surman

Epiphany

Do not disturb me. I am in conference
with the day. In urgent discussion with
a passing car, the postman on his round,
a finch sitting longer than expected

on a lilac branch, as if in quiet thought.
I am taking my place in the ordinary,
enjoying the knowable limits of what is.
For a moment everything is in stasis.

Then off it goes again, the astonishingly
usual, getting on with being part of life,
untroubled by its meaning or the truth.
The car’s sound diminishing on its way,

the finch flying off, the rattle and clank
of the letterbox as post flops onto the mat.

Paul Surman lives in Oxford where he is a member of Back Room Poets. He has been widely published in magazines such as Envoi, Magma, Orbis, and The Interpreter’s House, and in previous editions of Acumen. His first collection Places was published by Oversteps Books in 2018.

Roger Harvey

Rooks

Greedy rogues and undertakers, graveyard birds and thieves;
thus maligned along with other crows,
and all unfairly,
to me these rooks are wise in myth and fact,
riding the tall-tree sky beyond my window,
waking up the spring with their clamorous building.

In windy blue or misty distance,
both rude and shy, stern and friendly,
bred for an ancient England and still timeless,
they mark our seasons with an earthy song:
ground bass for sweeter flutings,
counterpoint to changing centuries.

Born into bare twigs,
they rise and fall above lush green tree-tops,
gilded with high sunshine, gleaming like autumn fruit;
transcendent, divine brightness in their eyes and strong with life,
they will caw us into winter too,
through another spring and into summers richer still than this,
perhaps with golden light more pure upon the black,
and music more glorious than any we have heard.

Roger Harvey was born in 1953 and has been writing professionally since 1966. In the 1970s he was editor of Poetry North-East and was the first poet to read on BBC Radio 1. The story of his USA reading tour is told in the confessional travelogue Poet on the Road. His recently published novels include Room for Us, Maiden Voyage, The Silver Spitfire and Percy and Dinah.

 

D.W. Evans

The Other One

Opening the blue door of a shed he had called
The Other One,
his old straw hat tips from a nail,
doffed by a breeze predicting a storm.

Its crown’s unwinding like a work unfinished,
black band sweat salted –
so much garden slog
under a few retirement years of sun.

So little left to show for it, all that slog.
A year untended, and where are the flowers
of yesteryear? Slug shit mostly,
piled up against trunks of weeds.

A god dies and its universe goes to pot>
I’ll keep his trowels and other diggy,
clawing stuff, though containers and planters
begin and end my Eden.

His hat I’ll let the wind take –
deliver it to the other dimension,
presumably somewhere up north?

DW Evans was born in Newcastle upon Tyne and lives in St Martin, Jersey. He won the Alan Jones Prize (2019 & 2021), awarded second place in Ó Bhéal’s Five Words 2022, and been highly commended in Acumen (2020 competition), Segora (2021) StoryTown Corsham (2022) and Shepton Mallet Snowdrop Festival Competition (2022). His poems have appeared in various publications including Frogmore Papers, One Hand Clapping, Proverse, Acumen, The Honest Ulsterman, Lucent Dreaming, Best New British & Irish Poets 2019 -2021, Epoch, A3 Review, Madrigal and Dreich