Alison Brackenbury

Alison Brackenbury Poems

Alison Brackenbury Biography

Alison Brackenbury (born 1953 Lincolnshire ) is a British poet. After studying at Oxford University she now lives in Gloucestershire. Her work has appeared in the Kenyon Review, Ploughshares.)

The Best Poem Of Alison Brackenbury

Lapwings

They were everywhere. No. Just God or smoke
Is that. They were the backdrop to the road,

My parents' home, the heavy winter fields
From which they flashed and kindled and uprode

The air in dozens. I ignored them all.
"What are they?" "Oh - peewits - " Then a hare flowed,

Bounded the furrows. Marriage. Child. I roamed
Round other farms. I only knew them gone

When, out of a sad winter, one returned.
I heard the high mocked cry "Pee - wit , " so long

Cut dead. I watched it buckle from vast air
To lure hawks from its chicks. That time had gone.

Gravely, the parents bobbed their strip of stubble.
How had I let this green and purple pass?

Fringed, plumed heads (full name, the crested plover)
Fluttered. So crowned cranes stalk Kenyan grass.

Then their one child, their anxious care, came running,
Squeaked along each furrow, dauntless, daft.

Did I once know the story of their lives?
Do they migrate from Spain? Or coasts' cold run?

And I forgot their massive arcs of wing.
When their raw cries swept over, my head spun

With all the brilliance of their black and white
As though you cracked the dark and found the sun.

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