Alex Barr, Bedding Plants for My Father

Letters To My Daughter

1

Hawking says time, elastic

and hooked like a cycle bungee,

can suddenly snap back:

I tap the brass fox knocker.

Hello from the Asian boys

going in and out next door.

Your variegated laurel.

Your rippled glass.

Your shape blurred in the hall.

Tall I remember. Warm

embrace, that too. Face

an identikit from my album.

2

How long can this go on?

Two thousand seven hundred

and eighty-four days gone

since the last time we met.

How beautiful you were.

Forgive how little I said.

But how could you listen then,

smug, nose in the air,

party feet turned in?

Spring. The borders packed

With scents. My plan to forget

your coldness blocked.

3

Shall we be meeting soon

when the white owl flies

out of the creaking barn?

Or at the bluestone gate

below Carningli where

the forest path comes out?

Will you amaze with a rustle

of dead hag’s-taper stalks

the garden at Picton Castle

and when the new year chimes

argue with me there

beside the clumps of thyme?

4

A window coloured to show

a sailing ship at sunset.

Framed rules. No music, no.

Neck weals carefully hidden

by silk. Around one wrist

a colorful braid ribbon.

Smug, nose in the air.

Why do we never meet?

Or are you everywhere?

The moon is above the barn.

Smell: I’m planing wood.

Listen: the wind is calm.

Further details

Alison Stone, To See What Rises

Diana Explains About Actaeon

It wasn’t modesty, I’m gorgeous,

although aeons older than the stars

you discard at first sag. A goddess

has no expiration date. And no,

I won’t titillate you with descriptions

of my eyes or muscle tone. There’s

far too much of that in poems.

No boy can reduce me

to a worn-out trope – woman exposed

or shining in the light

of the male gaze.

He needed to learn

how an object feels.

I cast my spell.

I called the dogs.

Further details