An Incomer
…huge numbers of Roman coffins, human bones, querns and pottery were discovered, indicating a Roman occupation site – Encyclopaedia of Portland History
Winter among burial mounds, faces wind
-scoured, clothes mud-clogged, besieged
by low cloud, in our bellies an ant-creep
of fear. The mist came alive as it poured
past our camp. I feared it was witchcraft.
Some called me a fool. Summer is worse:
stuck at the world’s edge, I dream of home
where sunlight dazzles off white stone,
and wayfaring trees are in milky bloom;
where linnet song trickles, alexanders flower
green above the thin scurf of grey soil
and startled lizards jitter into the shade
of spurge or fennel, so quick there is
no knowing if they were there at all.
My grandfather’s garden
Slabs of privet clipped foursquare,
soil corrugated by hoe and rake,
rose bed bisected by a concrete path
and tea roses in decorous rows,
each the proper space
from its neighbours, pruned
in the correct season, they bore out
the catalogue’s promises
of shapely blooms and upright growth,
good health and glossy leaves.
Masquerade. First Love. Garden Party.
Home Sweet Home. Peace.
And a memory of my mother’s voice:
your gran and granfer weren’t
on speaking terms for years.
Schrödinger’s poem
the cat sits on my desk watches
my hand scuttle over the page
flicks my pen prickles my scalp
licks right paw wipes right
licks left paw wipes left waits
flicks my pen prickles my scalp
don’t let him you’re too soft
the cat sits on my desk where
my poem is stuck in a box
it can’t move lid’s too tight
no air wheezy purr of the cat
who scratches himself
he watches me write he prickles
my scalp he purrs he yawns
th-thunk he jumps down
to sleep on my bed my hand
scuttles over the page but
my poem is silent inside its box.
Sharon’s poems have most recently appeared on
Amaryllis, The Poetry Shed and
Ink Sweat and Tears, and in
Picaroon and
Sentinel Literary Quarterly. In 2017 she won the Borderlines Poetry Competition with her poem ‘Tales of Doggerland’ and was also shortlisted for the Bridport Prize.
Bindweed Magazine 