Gillie Bolton

A Poetry Sequence

In Memory of Rowan

'Cut across the shadow of a star'

The sound of starlings makes her drop her match
as she kneels on the hearth. They bicker
on the chimney; she is alone
in the unlit room. Rocking back,
she thinks of the boy
with a mind full of birds, by Grasmere Lake .

She can see him panting up Rowantree Gill
above Raven Crag; wishing
in the stone circle at Castle How;
and slipping back home by Sourmilk Gill
from Easedale Tarn, when the fells cut the sun's light
as the evening holds its breath.

Perhaps he and Hartley Coleridge
fed the ducks, dumpy next to the seabirds,
and saw them help the wind
break the surface with ripples; or wondered
how the hills are reflected
clear enough to walk on.

He must have watched a dabchick dive,
leaving a widening trace; and looked back and up
to nab Scar where the eagles
pick bones clean. She remembers
how Jupiter, a hole punched
through the dark backdrop to darker Silver How,
trembled in the water.

There is No Rehearsal

Trying to get back,
she hesitates at two doors
in the reddened half-dark.
Surely there was only one
when she came?
Opening the nearer
crimson curtains face her,
a soundtrack of music, voices.
Through the gap
she can see screen eyes and lips.
But no audience.

Kneading

When the bread has proved, a slow swelling
in the warm kitchen, she tips it out
to knead again. The belly

of the dough distends,
then tears
from the sides of the upturned bowl;

long strands pull away,
and it falls
thud on the table;

the child's eyes widen
the whites blue-white
as he stares up

into the bowl's
upside-down interior -
a dome latticed

with threads and tendrils
of sticky flour
yeast lightened.

He tips his head to one side,
holding her eye to eye,
and makes a long statement

in toddler scribble
ending on the upturn
of a question mark.

?A castle for a bear',
she replies,
looking down

at carrotty curls which spring
from a scalp so translucent
she can see him think.

?Heart's Ease', Filey

In the guest house
two boys talk, toys forgotten
as they make their world.

?A sea-eagle can eat a salmon this big
in two bites. It can, you know.'

?Hundreds and millions on my pudding please,
hundreds and millions on my pudding please.'

One of them, hair like an autumn tree,
leaves his brother to come and stand
by her table - Laura Ashley cloth draped
to points. He talks of kittiwakes crying
?go home, go home'; a stone-carved cormorant
on a rock; fish-and -chip fat gulls.

Beyond him, through the window,
gulls swerve and plane - straight lines,
piercing angles - their wings isosceles;
and their cries acute as the winter sea;
pigeons rise with a clatter
that should hurt their wings,
yet their flight is like spilt water.

My name's Rowan, we're leaving today
to see my specialist,
I've got cancer.'

Some Children Return Home

His face laced in tubes
in the dim light of the midnight ward,
her son had gasped between blue lips:
?poor baby - she must hurt so much
to cry like that;
poor you Mum, you must be tired.
Don't go.'

Why has her son recovered
and grown too big to cradle? He hunts
his own life now. She is not a pieta.
She can drop her arms, and dance.

Let Me Go

calls the seabird
released
he also flies

?Many suns on water from one sun'

?no sun-rays heartwarm, hearthwarm
earth-love can reach Sunday's child
in a hole in the moon,
arms, filaments, finger-light
eagle son, god's father son
cut to splinters in the water
as the net drags; collects
itself, a moon penny bright as silver
come and play with little childer. Turn
it in your pocket when the moon's
a cheshire cat smile, Virus Lunare
drop and heal. That way madness.. ,

my creel is empty;
touch skin on skin, finger tip
to searing cold, only a bear
loved to rags.'

Transitional Object

The eyes of the bear on the slab
weep blood
as the butcher lifts his cleaver.
I can't stop to see where it lands
because people are queuing, staring,
wondering what I'm waiting for.
There's a bear in my rubbish, face up -
half devoured - staring at me
when I lift the lid to chuck out bottles.

Every child I see clasps one,
the other hand,
held firmly in mother's;

the fur has been cuddled away;
the knitted suit from eartips
to leaking toes
covers that;
only two beady eyes and a nose show,
even that is re-embroidered
in black.

I'm going into my boy's room; it's quiet;
I haven't been here for weeks.
months?
The toy is on the pillow again.

The stuffing bulges out
as I rupture the skin;
spew it round the room;
shred the fur, unpick wool claws
with my nails;
rip out glass eyes,
to stop them staring at me,
and hurl them in the lavatory;
real eyes would be squashy and wet
these rattle in the pan.

Caorunn

Rowan

Ash, a weed whose black buds point upwards,
breaks up paving slabs,
tears walls apart. The eagle sits
on the topmost branch of Ygdrassil,
the Norsemen's ash
that joins us to heaven and hell.
Its white grain is true,
strong for shaft of axe and hammer. Burning
clear on the hearth, it leaves potash
for the earth.

The mountain ash can never grow
so big. Its purple heartwood
carried the carved runes of Thor's warriors.
Guarding against witchcraft,
it roots on its own in rocks - berries bright
in the mist, when the hills are cardboard wings

'The achieve of, the mastery of the thing' *

The father who created the labyrinth,
crafted the first axe, takes each feather -
stitches and waxes it to the leather. He measures
for size, span, until the boy becomes impatient,
wants to try his wings.

The father knows patience, instructs
about flight patterns, the danger
of hawks, of flying too high. Icarus
looks out of the window at the gulls,
ploughman and pigeons.

He wants to reach beyond the reach of people;
beyond the flight of his cousin,
the bird of the moors with a call like a saw;
beyond the clouds. He knows
that eagles bear the spirits of dead kings
straight to the gods.

He makes his own bargain with the eagle-god,
sun-god and his fire.

* Gerard Manley Hopkins

Does the Eagle know what is in the Pit?

If a boy is a hawk, the sun can't melt
the glue of his wings
his world is of the wind and rain;
he builds his nest in a cleft
on the topmost crag,
safe as houses.

But the eagle is in danger.
His eyrie needs watching with binoculars,
protecting with snares and instructions
by people from the Royal Society.
From his bed
a boy can care for this bird.

And even as his ?body breaks down terribly'
he can be lifted to soar.

'Then the Word is Spoken' *

I pick up the rock, eye and hand
testing for size, fit; place it just right
on the dry-stone wall, gentling
into where it belongs. Then the next one,
and the next, my fingers toughen
on gritstone, gleams of quartz.

My mind drains though my senses:
the hum of the stream
frothing like coca-cola; the inane laugh
of a grouse; a lark's bubbling; the brown smell
of the peat, heather, sheep droppings;
and the startle of tormentil.

My feet are as firmly on the ground
in stoutness of sole
as ever they could be; draughts of coffee
are acrid, sweet with the nursing of milk;
my muscles glad, head high as cirrus;
the sun dropping behind the crags
glows in the spaces between every rock
in the weathered drystone-walls
turning them to lace.

I throw myself on the peat
bared of stone, to feel,
as Wordsworth did, the wheel of our planet.
If I were to wriggle,
and wriggle - the earth would accept me,
close around me - nose and toes covered last.

My breathing would become part
of the breathing of the earth.

* Meister Eckhardt

Postcript

It's your birthday
today Rowan:
yet you give her a present.

It's not so much
that you became the son
who might have died of asthma,
on a motor bike.

More that she now know why the lad
in her dreams is so stunted, denied,
starved - that other half of herself -
nearly, but not quite, destroyed.

You gave her
a real boy
to grieve for.

Gillie Bolton , 'Eagle on the topmost branch, a poetry sequence.
Envoi Poetry Journal , no 120, pp123-129

Gillie Bolton , from: (1997) Hole in the Moon.
Waldean Press. North Leverton, Notts

When the word is spoken Poetry Wales Poetry Wales vol 32 no 1 p11