Well, at the Writing Britain exhibition at the British Library yesterday, I listened to a recording of Ciaran Carson reading his poem ‘Belfast Confetti’. I hadn’t come across it before, and I thought it startlingly, starkly beautiful. Less than three hours later, on the train, I was reading The Boy Who Could See Demons by Carolyn Jess-Cooke, and there was the poem, quoted in full.

If that isn’t a poem saying it wants to be a blog post, I don’t know what is. Click here, and you’l find a page with both the text of the poem and a box which is a recording of the poet reading it. I’d recommend the second option: I think you will find it a minute and eighteen seconds well spent.

wedgewood sky make me

anything but blue.

Silhouette

Silhouette is a word that I wouldn’t be surprised to find in a poem.

It might share a verse with elemental, or hinterland.

Or it might snuggle up to something more archaic. Begotten, perhaps, or kith.

Silhouette belongs with words that sing in ribbons from the tongue,

breathe themselves from pages,

make lights.

Yes, silhouette is a poet’s word.

But I think I’ll use it anyway.

Next time I walk by branches cold against the sky

or my beloved passes in front of the sun,

I will make a poem of my life.

SB 2011

*

Impact

A woodpecker wallops into the window.

We jump, and dash outside.

On the bench below the pane, its body twitches.

Blood pulses bright.

In the time it takes for us to look at each other and ask what we should do,

the bird is dead.

Sadly, we admire its colours, useless now.

What a shame, we add as we turn away.

We look toward the damson tree that, reflected, made for this swift slaughter.

On the glass, a wing outlined in its own dust,

an image made of shock,

feather-perfect.

*

I’ve written a poem. I don’t know why publishing poetry feels more exposing than writing about every aspect of my dance with breast cancer, but it does.

Anyway, here goes. I hope you like it.

*

The Answer

‘So, why are you moving?’ has replaced, ‘So, how are you?’

(head on one side, meaningful eye contact)

as the question I am asked more than any other.

The answer is not simple:

Because cancer made me ache every mile from here to my mother.

Because dancing with cancer shines an unforgiving light everywhere and London, like my scarred and puckering breast, does not look good in an unforgiving light.

Because what matters now is near me wherever I am.

Because there the beaches are empty and the sky is unlimited and I newly crave salt air.

The answer is to be standing naked from the waist up and asking to be understood.

So I have found another answer, also true:

‘Because it’s time.’

*

‘Why do you think you have breast cancer?’

‘Because it’s time.’

The words were there before they had told me what they were going to be.

They frolicked between us, surprising.

The room was bare and bright. A dull print of a possible rose on the wall; clean curtains; real chairs.

Only the box of tissues, shadow of the freshly diagnosed, said that this was counselling.

We watched the words a while.

I still don’t understand them. I still think they are true.