Stephen Bird

North West

The coordinates of my heartland
are north west. Egalitarian

rights of way about a city square,
Manchester Central Library in the round,

sundial shadows from its portico,
limestone columns to lean on and meet by,

sunlight rising through its windows on
righteous and unrighteous in the carrels.

Or Seattle’s open sculpture garden,
where the tilted planes of lawn and footpath

slalom from pavilion to shoreline,
and pairs of friendly seats attend together

the effect of wind on open water
and a holy mountain in the haze.

Stephen Bird is a technical editor and content strategist. He grew up in Cheshire, studied in Newcastle, and now lives and works in Central Scotland. His poems have been published in Edinburgh’s Anon magazine, and by Stirling’s Makar.

John Scarborough

The Old Masters
After Musée Des Beaux Arts W H Auden

About suffering, according to Auden,
the Old Masters were never wrong.
They knew its human position.

In a resort-town Intensive Care,
blood cells and pathogens skirmish
through a grandfather’s pumped lungs.

Nurses and doctors in flimsy armour
line his bed, wait for the count,
lift him, turn him, chest down.

Across fields on the edge of town,
ploughmen are tilling the rich soil,
as fine as a girl’s braided hair.

Dogs running free are still
doing their doggy business,
sheep are fat with unborn lambs.

The tides still follow the moon
and sunlight washes the waves,
whether or not the tourists come.

In the distance, giant turbines
circle slowly, murmur on the breeze,
heard only by a solitary hawk.

John has enjoyed a life-long interest in poetry and retired last year to concentrate on his own writing. He has since had six poems retained for publication in poetry/literary journals and describes himself as being on a steep learning curve towards a first collection. He is a member of Louth Poetry Review Group which offers considerable inspiration and critique. He loves the great outdoors and has a particular interest in pastoral poetry as well as verse about human relationships.

 

Anne Ryland

The Marias of Lisbon

On my winter morning run to the basilica, I slow
and pause to read washing lines – strung from rooftops,
reaching window to window across scrunched
alleys, they marry opposed households.

The Marias of Lisbon have threaded their own map
through the jumbled city. Laundry flocks
in courtyards, slinks along the narrow becos. Jeans
laze
against crumbling plaster, T shirts clash with azulejos.

One floor above cobbles, a sheet flutters in surrender.
I cross over to pass below, study this Maria’s method,
her back rows – assorted cloths; chalice-cleaners,
perhaps.,
Part-purified, she’s gone off to Missa.

Untroubled by glory, Maria-in-the-flats has pinned
her family upside-down-inside-out. Two nights
they’ve been there. She longs for um pouco de
liberdade –
not just her bra, her hair, flowing in the wind.

The most fragile women relish being aired.
I imagine a lone bird-like Maria leaning over
her balcony to the rope, for uma cerimônia de lavanderia –
a resistance-dress clasped in her hand.

Another, as a young wife, had to keep guard
at the window. Tell me that story, Lisboeta Maria –
how you pegged a faded towel on your line as
a signal
to your husband: it was safe now to come home.

Anne Ryland’s third collection of poetry, Unruled Journal, has just been published by Valley Press. Her previous collections are Autumnologist, shortlisted for The Forward Prize for Best First Collection 2006, and The Unmothering Class (Arrowhead Press). She lives in Berwick-upon-Tweed and leads writing workshops in community-based settings. https://anneryland.co.uk