Did not think about my roots,
Forgot what it meant to be planted.
A poem in which I realize they may try to cut me down,
That I must change with the seasons,
That I do it so well
It looks like they are changing with me.
A poem in which I remember I have existed for centuries,
That centuries are far too small a unit of measurement,
That time found itself in the forests, woods and jungles.
Remember I have witnessed creation,
That I am key to it.
A poem in which some will carve their names into my skin
In hopes the universe will know them.
Where I am so tall I kiss the sun.
Trees cannot hide,
They belong to the day and to the night,
To the past and the future.
A poem in which I stop looking for it,
Because I am home.
I am habitat.
My branches are host and shelter
I am life-giver and fruit-bearer.
Self-sufficient protection.
A poem in which I remember I am a tree.
Ruth Awolola
‘We’ve had a whirl and a blast, girl’ – Friendship
Some alliances, especially when we are young, have a sharp edge of competition, as seen here in Rhian Edwards’s ‘Polly’ or Kate Tempest’s ‘Thirteen’. Friendship, as Polly Clark finds, is not always as easy as pop culture promises, though its influence on us is often immense. Throughout our lives, the relationships we forge with our friends are some of the most deep, enduring and important: ‘For this,’ writes Elizabeth Jennings, ‘all Nature slows and sings.’
Here are poems that express the unbeatable feeling of escaping with a partner in crime, from Helen Burke’s playtime gallops to Jean Tepperman’s yell of girl-gang exhilaration:
‘We are screaming,
we are flying,
laughing, and won’t stop.’
Here are hymns to long lifetimes of friendship from Jackie Kay and Catherine Maria Fanshawe. Hannah More immortalizes the Bluestockings, gathering in a serene tea-fuelled rebellion to discuss topics considered too challenging for women at the time. Here, too, are poems that remember a glorious shared history, and show long-distance love being sent in letters and even in a fragrant Christmas pudding.
5th Dudley Girl Guides
Your plain faces are lovely as bunting
in the sunlight while you pitch your tents
calling each other to pull guy-ropes taut
crawling easy as lads lifting
the silver pole inside the green canvas.
I would like to be you again, just for a moment,
catching another wench’s smile like a frisbee
raising your flag in the expectant air.
Liz Berry
Thirteen
The boys have football and skate ramps.
They can ride BMX
and play basketball in the courts by the flats until midnight.
The girls have shame.
One day,
when we are grown and we have minds of our own,
we will be kind women, with nice smiles and families and jobs.
And we will sit,
with the weight of our lives and our pain
pushing our bodies down into the bus seats,
and we will see thirteen-year-old girls for what will seem
like the first time since we’ve been them,
and they will be sitting in front of us, laughing
into their hands at our shoes or our jackets,
and rolling their eyes at each other.
While out of the window, in the sunshine,
the boys will be cheering each other on,
and daring each other to jump higher and higher.
Kate Tempest
Lacing Boots
They were narrow, beautiful.
We laced them with finesse.
At lunch hours, pretended we were skaters.
Foreign – mystical enchantresses.
We ran them through the long garden,
down the cinder track, then, through
the wildest stretch, to the tennis courts
and back again.
Folding them, the soft skin doubled over.
Back into our secret locker. In bold
brown brogues we re-appeared
at Latin, double French and Scripture – just as we were
to all around, our feet and hair, neat,
fastened firmly down.
Only ourselves aware that outside two gazelles
were running still,
through the long grass towards
the tennis courts – and on.
Helen Burke
Witch
They told me
I smile prettier with my mouth closed.
They said –
better cut your hair –
long, it’s all frizzy,
looks Jewish.
They hushed me in restaurants
looking around them
while the mirrors above the table
jeered infinite reflections
of a raw, square face.
They questioned me
when I sang in the street.
They stood taller at tea
smoothly explaining
my eyes on the saucers,
trying to hide the hand grenade
in my pants pocket,
or crouched behind the piano.
They mocked me with magazines
full of breasts and lace,
published in their triumph
when the doctor’s oldest son
married a nice sweet girl.
They told me tweed-suit stories
of various careers of ladies.
I woke up at night
afraid of dying.
They built screens and room dividers
to hide unsightly desire
sixteen years old
raw and hopeless
they buttoned me into dresses
covered with pink flowers.
They waited for me to finish
then continued the conversation.
I have been invisible,
weird and supernatural.
I want my black dress.
I want my hair
curling wild around me.
I want my broomstick
from the closet where I hid it.
Tonight I meet my sisters
in the graveyard.
Around midnight
if you stop at a red light
in the wet city traffic,
watch for us against the moon.
We are screaming,
we are flying,
laughing, and won’t stop.
Jean Tepperman
Polly
The gap between your teeth became my ambition,
as did your bias for fountain pens,
rubbing your nose with the ball
of your hand. That succession of clicks
where the bone seemingly turned.
I always wondered at the violence
you gave your cropped hair, yanking a fistful
of it down to your shoulder, a modest trick,
the pretence of decrying yourself
while delivering a lavish answer.
I secretly warred with you in French
and English though never destined
to beat you. Still, we were able to share
the teacher we loved and code-named
Cornelius, as we watched him on Fridays,
buy flowers at the bus station.
We both lived for the pauses
where we composed ghost stories
for each other, promenading the playground,
our arms linked and unbreakable.
How I admired the mess you made,
your massacre of books, the pencilled
for completing War and Peace
by the age of eleven. What I wouldn’t
have given for your attic scatter,
the names of your sisters,
your fountain pen handwriting, the turgid
lettering I mimicked in secret
and now pass off as my own.
Rhian Edwards
To D.R.
Beyond the bars I see her move,
A mystery of blue and green,
As though across the prison yard
The spirit of the spring had been.
And as she lifts her hands to press
The happy sunshine of her hair,
From the grey ground the pigeons rise,
And rustle upwards in the air,
As though her two hands held a key
To set the imprisoned spirits free.
Laura Grey
To Mrs K., On Her Sending Me an English Christmas Plum-Cake at Paris
What crowding thoughts around me wake,
What marvels in a Christmas-cake!
Ah say, what strange enchantment dwells
Enclosed within its odorous cells?
Is there no small magician bound
Encrusted in its snowy round?
For magic surely lurks in this,
A cake that tells of vanished bliss;
A cake that conjures up to view
The early scenes, when life was new;
When memory knew no sorrows past,
And hope believed in joys that last! –
Mysterious cake, whose folds contain
Life’s calendar of bliss and pain;
That speaks of friends for ever fled,
And wakes the tears I love to shed.
Oft shall I breathe her cherished name
From whose fair hand the offering came:
For she recalls the artless smile
Of nymphs that deck my native isle;
Of beauty that we love to trace,
Allied with tender, modest grace;
Of those who, while abroad they roam,
Retain each charm that gladdens home,
And whose dear friendships can impart
A Christmas banquet for the heart!
Helen Maria Williams
Friendship
Such love I cannot analyse;
It does not rest in lips or eyes,
Neither in kisses nor caress.
Partly, I know, it’s gentleness
And understanding in one word
Or in brief letters. It’s preserved
By trust and by respect and awe.
These are the words I’m feeling for.
Two people, yes, two lasting friends.
The giving comes, the taking ends
There is no measure for such things.
For this all Nature slows and sings.
Elizabeth Jennings
from Essay on Friendship
To Artemisia. – ’Tis to her we sing,
For her once more we touch the founding string.
’Tis not to Cythera’s reign nor Cupid’s fires,
But sacred Friendship that our muse inspires.
A theme that suits Aemilia’s pleasing tongue:
So to the fair ones I devote my song.
The wise will seldom credit all they hear,
Though saucy wits should tell thee with a sneer,
That women’s friendships, like a certain fly,
Are hatched i’the morning and at ev’ning die.
’Tis true, our sex has been from early time
A constant topic for satiric rhyme:
Nor without reason – since we’re often found
Or lost in passion, or in pleasures drowned:
And the fierce winds that bid the ocean roll
Are less inconstant than a woman’s soul:
Yet some there are that keep the mod’rate way,
Can think an hour, and be calm a day:
Who ne’er were known to start into a flame,
Turn pale or tremble at a losing game,
Run Chloe’s shape or Delia’s features down,
Or change complexion at Celinda’s gown:
But still serene, compassionate and kind,
Walk through life’s circuit with an equal mind.
Of all companions I would choose to shun
Such, whose blunt truths are like a bursting gun,
Who in a breath count all your follies o’er,
And close their lectures with a mirthful roar:
But reason here will prove the safest guide,
Extremes are dang’rous placed on either side.
A friend too soft will hardly prove sincere;
The wit’s inconstant, and the learn’d severe.
Good breeding, wit, and learning, all conspire
To charm mankind and make the world admire,
Yet in a friend but serve an under part:
The main ingredient is an honest heart.
Mary Leapor
Friends
It showed how friendship
doesn’t end (like when
Emma and I watched
eight episodes in one go)
though outside my window
the climate was changing
and in my experience
people found each other
quite easy to take or leave.
The day after the last episode
they ran them all again,
protecting me, it seems.
I keep just one from
two-hundred-and-thirty-six.
It’s the one where Ross says,
but this can’t be it,
and Rachel says,
then how come it is?
and he sinks to his knees with his arms
around her legs and the camera
moves slowly back
and they hold the shot
for a long time
before the theme tune begins.
Polly Clark
from The Bas Bleu
Hail, Conversation, soothing power,
Sweet goddess of the social hour!
O may thy worship long prevail,
And thy true votaries never fail!
Long may thy polished altars blaze
With wax-lights’ undiminished rays!
Still be thy nightly offerings paid,
Libations large of lemonade!
In silver vases, loaded, rise
The biscuits’ ample sacrifice!
Nor be the milk-white streams forgot
Of thirst-assuaging, cool orgeat;
Rise, incense pure from fragrant tea,
Delicious incense, worthy thee!
Hannah More
Introductions
Some of what we love
we stumble upon –
a purse of gold thrown on the road,
a poem, a friend, a great song.
And more
discloses itself to us –
a well among green hazels,
a nut thicket –
when we are worn out searching
for something quite different.
And more
comes to us, carried
as carefully
as a bright cup of water,
as new bread.
Moya Cannon
When Last We Parted
When last we parted, thou wert young and fair,
How beautiful let fond remembrance say!
Alas! since then old time has stolen away
Full thirty years, leaving my temples bare. –
So has it perished like a thing of air,
The dream of love and youth! – now both are grey
Yet still remembering that delightful day,
Though time with his cold touch has blanched my hair,
Though I have suffered many years of pain
Since then, though I did never think to live
To he
ar that voice or see those eyes again,
I can a sad but cordial greeting give,
And for thy welfare breathe as warm a prayer –
As when I loved thee young and fair.
Catherine Maria Fanshawe
Long Departure
Then I said to the elegant ladies:
‘How you will remember when you are old
the glorious things we did in our youth!
We did many pure and beautiful things.
Now that you are leaving the city,
love’s sharp pain encircles my heart.’
Sappho
Fiere
If ye went tae the tapmost hill, Fiere
Whaur we used tae clamb as girls,
Ye’d see the snow the day, Fiere,
Settling on the hills.
You’d mind o’ anither day, mibbe,
We ran doon the hill in the snow,
Sliding and singing oor way tae the foot,
Lassies laughing thegither – how braw.
The years slipping awa; oot in the weather.
And noo we’re suddenly auld, Fiere,
Oor friendship’s ne’er been weary.
We’ve aye seen the wurld differently.
Whaur would I hae been weyoot my jo,
My fiere, my fiercy, my dearie O?
Oor hair micht be silver noo,
Oor walk a wee bit doddery,
But we’ve had a whirl and a blast, girl,
Thru’ the cauld blast winter, thru spring, summer.
O’er a lifetime, my fiere, my bonnie lassie,
I’d defend you – you, me; blithe and blatter,
Here we gang doon the hill, nae matter,
Past the bracken, bothy, bonny braes, barley.
Oot by the roaring Sea, still havin a blether.
We who loved sincerely; we who loved sae fiercely.
The snow ne’er looked sae barrie,
Nor the winter trees sae pretty.
C’mon, c’mon my dearie – tak my hand, my fiere!
Jackie Kay
‘My heart has made its mind up’ – Love
Love has always preoccupied poets. Most anthologies are stuffed with goddesses. Glimpsed but not grasped, they are the idealized objects of breathless infatuation immortalized by, usually, male writers. Christina Rossetti and Elizabeth Siddal answer that stereotype sharply here. The artist – in this case, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, brother to one and husband to the other – feeds on his misunderstood muse, worshipping her face while ignoring her feelings.