English Poems From The Sanctuary Knocker Poem by Sheena Blackhall

A Talk with a Tree
Through your bald branches
I see an open skylight

Have you ever decided to shut up shop?
To fly to Chile, Siberia, or Leamington Spa?
Be a tree of a different leaf?

What does morning sound like, to a tree?
All those chattering birds,
Those moaning winds
Lovesick foxes and grunting grumpy badgers
Will a house inherit your roots?
Like a goldfish trapped in a bowl
You're chained to your birth spot

Walkers in hobnailed boots
Trample your porch
Lovers etch names in your sides

Scallywag hares for neighbours
Mushrooms for tenants

It's April. Soon you'll be dressed
In your elfin negligee

What's that? No comment?
In summer you'll flaunt your skirts
Like the flare of flamenco
I applaud you tree,
Olé


Through the glistening eyes of flowers
Through the glistening eyes of flowers
Glint of tears- they cannot stay
All their beauty's transient
Lives that vanish in a day
As with flowers that bloom we must
Follow them into the dust


Smoke
A puff of smoke, grey fluff and feather
Bursts from a hedge
On a clumsy fledgling flight

Nature has dressed the braes around in gold
A glut of glorious daffodils

Snowdrifts beneath the tree
Are a distant memory

The clock ticks on
Round the changing face of seasons
The mirror shows late winter all year round


Between the Cemetary & MacDonalds
Tattered memories blow across the pavement
A toddler cries fat tears down chubby cheeks

Seagulls are active ingredients in this cityscape
Sirens wail by, opening wounds in the ear of day
Millions of birds have slipped through the back door of night

This street, these centuries, this city
How many winters will pass before they crumble?

Will pestilence, war, or global warming prove fatal
Before more than birds pass through the door of night?


Gilding the Lily
How do you gild the lily?
A nip- a tuck- a face as tight's a mummy?
Contact lenses? The toothy Hollywood smile?

Nile women henna-dyed their hands
Rubbed kohl around their eyes
(lead ore, antimony, malachite)

Romans painted their eyes with golden saffron
Blackened imperial eyelids with wood ash

The poet, Ovid, pounded narcissi bulbs
Stirred egg and flour of barley bean
Into the ultimate Bardic beauty cream

Galen, the Greek physician, favoured
Beeswax, olive oil, mixed to a spread
With water, a soothing face pack

England's Virgin Queen
Whitened her cheeks with lead
Put plumpers into her mouth
To puff out sunken cheeks,
Hide rotten tooth-stumps

In Restoration England, blotches
Were hidden by patches

How do you gild the lily?
Underneath the knife?
Or do you walk au natural through life?


The Sunbathers (1960s)
Desk chairs in rows, dig their wooden heels into the sand
A businessman in a suit with a striped tie
Wears an incongruous hanky over his eyes
Over the hanky, he has placed his specs
Perhaps to keep the win from blowing the hanky off
Trimmed sides of hair, stand guardian
To the bald dome of his head.
He is seated in the middle of row nine

Beside him, women in winter coats with head-squares
Like Hijabs, recline in their deck chairs
Taking in the ozone

Behind him, a perm-haired women
Is darning a sock. Everyone is stoic
Facing the bitter winds of June from the North Sea

Someone was saying you have to make the best of it
Someone was saying, what can you expect from summer weather
Someone mentioned the fact that the ice cream vender was late
Someone was complaining there was no Punch and Judy man
Someone was saying the Band of Hope was coming
Everyone's coat was buttoned up to the neck
Stiff upper lip in sixties summer Britain


Picnic
Friesian cows graze nonchalantly round two picnickers
The cows are like moving tables, for flies to dine off

The picnic pair have flip up chairs and a table
Have taken their kitchenette for a trip outside.
There is a bottle of beer on the tablecloth,
A basket of goodies on the grass.

The husband's glasses catch the noonday sun
His shirt's crisscrossed by braces
His suit jacket is hung neatly on his chair

His wife wears a black lace dress
For cocktail hour. The heels on her shoes
Have gathered balls of grass, like rural castors

Custom and costume collide
The gentleman's reading his paper,
The woman's adjusting her lacy serviette
Neither, look at the cows.

The cows ignore the picnickers
Both species co-exist in a parallel universe


The Beauty Contest
Three bathing beauties with bouffant backcombed hair
In frilly un-wet swimming costumes
Place their long nailed hands
Provocatively on their haunches

One yawns, her suit half- basque half-swimmer
A peroxide blonde with a painted on fake tan

A young man leers at her bum
An old man with bald tufts of hair
Is drinking tea oblivious to her crotch
A nose length away from his scone
Perhaps he has noticed the girl has halitosis
BO and body hair.

She has escaped the curse of acne
Not the sharpest tool in the box

Pies and chips will see her charms go west
For now, she looks in the mirror
Sees the fairest one of all

In the Victorian Chemist
Leeches, moustache grease and arsenic too
Jars of every known colour and hue
Cobalt blue bottles for syrups to sip
Potions for bottom rash, earache, sore lip

Actinic green glass for poisonous substances
Herbs, spices, soaps and traditional brushes,
Lavender, liquorice, cough sweets in bags
Cocaine and camphor, sharp needles for jags

Tins and emollients, strange beauty potions
Bronchial lozenges, Vaseline lotions
Tinned Boric acid and throaty pastilles
Glycerine, lemon and honey for ills

Senna for laxative, mineral waters
Inhalers and soothers for croup-troubled daughters
In the Victorian chemist, each cure
Comes with a cost a full purse may procure


God's in a Bottle: Catholic Miners in Durham
God's in a bottle, empty of whisky or medicine.
A delicate ladder, leans against a crucifix,
The stairway to Heaven

The Irish Roman Catholic diaspora
Mining in County Durham
Fashioned these miniature Hope-scapes
Climbing from sooty hell, small step by step
A Tour of Durham
Wearhead, Annefield, Brancepeth, Binchester
Hartlepool, Egglestone, Staindrop, Lanchester
Barnard Castle, Romaldkirk, Sedgefield, Billingham
Guisborough, Middlesbrough, Coxhoe, Wolsingham
Newton Aycliffe, Raby Castle, Peterlee and Darlington
Bishop Auckland, Spennymuir, Stockton and Willington
Stanhope, Easington, Durham & Crimdon
Bowes, Crotsk, Ushaw, Hardwick, Seaham
Wharton Park, Nettlesworth, Sniperley, Escomb
Frosterely, Killope and Palace Green
Shincliffe, Croxdale, Castle Eden Green
Cauldron Snout, High Force, Middleton-in-Teesdale
Chester-le-Street, Blackhall, Finchale & Weardale

Whistle-stop tour of an English shire
Faster than a zip-card with your pants on fire


Gladstone Bags
He sought fallen women by prowling the street
With all of the zeal of a stallion in heat
To save them, escorting them home for a treat
Gladstone, that upright reformer

Gladstone bags, Gladstone bags
What secrets they hold in their keeping
Gladstone bags, Gladstone bags
Used in India, Egypt and Worthing


Kings, at Easter
The high horse chestnut opens its umbrella
Cobbles clatter with the clump of feet
Under stone arches, clash of many tongues
Like mercury, minds meeting here at Kings
Four Seasons swithering, a prelude to summer
The library a great glacier, gleams
Beneath the screech of gulls, the bleep of i-pads
The university navigates new times