because you are eight now 💜

Kite

You said you wanted to make
a kite, and it must be purple
you said, so we found purple paper
and pink string and sticks and scissors 
and cellotape, and you drew a shape 
on the purple paper, declaring it ‘kite’
and eventually there it was, dangling
ecstatic down the centre of the
banisters, with your sweet, smiling face
above me and the kite dancing in the air.

Rose Cook

published in ‘Sightings’ Rose Cook (2019 Hen Run)

🧡 Today we celebrate International Women’s Day – all women everywhere

I am thinking particularly of the beautiful women in my life – my daughter, my sons’ female partners, my granddaughters, my friends and those now gone – my mother, grandmothers, aunts…so I bring here one of my poems Bloodlines about my paternal grandmother:

poem from my book Sightings published by Hen Run at http://www.greyhenpress.com         £4 plus p&p

The Threshold of Imbolc – 1st February when Brigid steps in

Brigid’s Day by Rose Cook     (published in Sightings by Grey Hen Press)

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‘Sightings’ or my new book ‘Shedding Feathers’ 💫

now available from me or email: info@greyhenpress.com £4 plus p&p

August…Lammas blessings

Crowning Party

 

This year the weather changed with rain

and cold in the North, hints of autumn.

 

When our children were small, we always held a party

when August began. Each wore a crown.

 

The barley fields wave theirs in a golden sea.

Farmers will begin to gather the grain.

 

My mother took us bilberrying up on the moors.

A whole wild day scrambling through heather.

Special sandwiches and pop.

 

photograph and poem Rose Cook

poem from Sightings available http://www.greyhenpress.com

For Brigid, for Imbolc 💚 and for my own mother of course, a midwife, she birthed me in February

Brigid’s Day

 

 

And so, it snows for her.

February opens white, to shine around

and she brings us together –

this midwife, this fertile goddess of the field.

How we love her, that she brings light.

 

And Seamus’ wife speaks on the radio

of how he loved Brigid particularly

and all womankind come to that,

which she celebrates by reading his love poem

The Clothes Shrine for Herself and herself.

And there is love on this day of Brigid

and we are not afraid.

 

 

note: Seamus Heaney’s last words were a text to his wife, Marie, saying nolle timere (don’t be afraid).

 

poem and photo Rose Cook

From my new book ‘Sightings’ which is available from me or:  info@greyhenpress.com