Thank Heavens for the Stars

Tenth Post, of Milk and Foxes

Thank Heavens for the Stars

It’s the third warm day
night has come on, gravy thickened 
stars glisten in the pot
they shine like new pins.

I am a hollow
an inverse shape, 
concave. 

I should wear black 
to disappear. 

Under the plough 
my unused milk leaks, 
the drops roll like sweat.

My nightdress is a conjurer.

Milky stars and night 
produce stillness 
like a rabbit from a hat. 

My arms remember 
how to rise,
point out Ursa Major,
the curve of the Bears back. 

Her little voice is frail 
from screaming.

She could become old that way. 

The stars remind her
she is just a baby. 

(this poem was first published in Poetry Space, Showcase June 2018.) 

 

I wrote this poem as I was giving up breast feeding my second daughter. My bedroom opened out onto my garden which, fenceless, opened up into the forest. I would often take moments out in the garden to breathe the fresh forest air, to let the demands of motherhood fall away to surrender to the simple animal I am, one that needs fresh air, good food, light, exercise, joy. I was still in this liminal space of night and day being flexible bendable creatures ready to sleep and wake with my baby and often I would find myself outside in my nightdress, sometimes alone and sometimes with my daughter/s, and sometimes, if I was very lucky, with the foxes.

The next two poems were written at the same sort of time, I was often alone with just my kids. my husband is an actor and was always on tour my best friend became the forest, I knew it intimately. I knew where the fox slept outside her den, where the mouflon grazed first thing in the morning and then in the afternoon. I knew where the rabbits hid so silently from view (they are much much more shy here than in the uk and to see a rabbit here is like absolute gold dust!) I knew the deer closest to my house and met those that wandered further. It was a time of natural abundance, we walked miles and miles in that forest making circles over and over with our steps, this rhythm gave me time and space to conjure words directly from the wood. my baby was always strapped to my back and we would stop to feed whenever she was hungry. I gathered wild cherries, blueberries and apples, we were never short of jam!

The following two poems were first published in The Gravity of the Thing

Milk Fever

my mind is with the autumn larch
its saffron needles hot and burning

my chest is a furnace
an oven, two saucepans
boil over and scald

one empty and one full
the lives I carry
in molten silver arms
the larch makes pins of them
with its thin fingers

shadows crochet the den
she is there again, the fox

if I weren’t carrying such a load
I would stroke that fiery cheek
body and tail, round like a Russian hat

she knows what it is to burn

around us the forest foams
blossoms bubble up
the crests of green waves

the wild cherry knows the snow
mimics it with white blooming flakes

the cold was not long ago
my loneliness reaches for it

unmade cherries weep white tears

This is a painting I did of a dream fox, in this same era, that arrived at the foot of my garden. He looked at me with human eyes.

Midwife

outside my window
before dawn
something was born, or died,
a hen perhaps? a rat?

—fox and her cool paws
midwife it

morning fills me blue
swallows litter me like the sky
their wings are scissors

her voice was a nail
a hessian flower in bloom
rough, a hedgerow altar
she prayed like a briar would

her barbs bring me the day
loneliness swaddles the tip
of a pine needle, slender grey

her language stuck to me
became tar and feathers
whatever died knew her gall
she made an urn for their soul
from her ecstatic screeching

only now do I wonder
if the death was her own
or if she was making love

or both

I took this photo of one of the young foxes from a den very close to our house. we went every day to sit close and watch them. even my littlest daughter managed to stay quiet such was her awe to see these beautiful creatures.

It was the time of the fox for us. Every day I would walk past a mother fox sleeping outside her den. we would often cross paths in the forest, her sidling past like a fire spirit burning us with wonder. When we moved house the fox energy stayed with us and this family arrived from under the path we walked to collect cherries. sprang out of the earth like fairies playful and bold. I have a great many fox poems! we adored seeing their faces pop out so see if we were there. we called this little guy Oliver, he was by far the most courageous of the cubs. 

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