Very happy that The High Window poetry magazine is out, with some of my poems in it

via The High Window: Issue 10 Summer 2018

 

The Poets

Alice Allen  •  Peter Branson • John Cassidy • Rose Cook •  Gareth Culshaw •  Marie Dullaghan  • Jonathan Edwards • Mike Farren  • Pete Green  • Carl Griffin  • Dominic James  • Tess Jolley  • Angelica Krikler • Juliet Lacey  •  Edward Lee •  Gill McEvoy •   Robert Okaji • William Oxley  •  Andrew Parkin  •  Darren Ryder • Mark Russell • Katerina Štruncová  • David Stuart  • Cedric Watts • Helen May Williams  • James Wood  

poetry and music May 25th @ The Word Cafe

May 1st …Beltane blessing all

Lone Hawthorn On The Moor

 

For you are ancient and withstand terrible weathers.

For you make a dark shape in winter, carry a nest.

For I saw you sheathed in frozen snow, your berries hoar.

For you grow on the crest of a slope.

For you are potent, with medicinal properties.

Wands made from you hold great power.

For in spring you are covered in white blossom.

For you are the May tree and shake confetti on the girls,

who dance around your trunk.

For you are most erotic and bless love and fertility.

For you teem with life, insects that fly and crawl, lichen

and every kind of bird wants to shelter in your branches.

For you fill with the hum of bees.

For you must never be broken, nor taken home,

For you are hope, which remains wild.

For you have thorns and red berries, which imbue meaning,

though children make itching powder, babies are fed your syrup.

For you offer protection.

For you are grizzled and grow low to the ground.

 

Rose Cook

 

* this poem is in my new book  Hearth which is available from me or http://www.culturedllama.co.uk/