Biting Dust: English Poems Of Pandas, Panic, Love And Death Poem by Sheena Blackhall

Summer of Love

In a farming parish full of hills and honey
Catriona had many suitors

The cowherd dogged her steps each summer evening
As did the quiet widower from Glen Shiel
The laird’s eyes followed her round the Lammas fair

Three girls the blacksmith courted, quick and lusty
And each one filling up with his planted seed

Love can be a path of stones and tares
It starts with strewn flowers, and ends in tears

She turned the butter churn, near burst its sides
Never were farmhouse flags so fiercely scrubbed

And every night she stared at the horned moon
While the cattle grumbled and coughed in the moonlit byre

Now Love’s bitter bloom had taken root
Too late she’d waited, hoping to win him over

So no one thought it at all the least unusual
When the bog gave up two bodies that windy Autumn

Love can be a path of stones and tares
It starts with strewn flowers, and ends in tears


The Haywain

A sardonic string bean jogger who loved Bellini,
murdered by a mugger in the park

A guffawing graffiti artist, with septicaemia
A jovial Japanese postman from Chicago,
struck by a taxi speeding through a light

A happy slapper manicure assistant,
polished off by cancer in her prime

A prisoner with Aids, swops one grim cell for another
A player whose final act was suicide,
after a string of scurrilous reviews

A recluse whose untuned harpsichord burned with her
A ballerina culled by anorexia,
worn away to a shadow of herself

A babe whose superflous feet dropped down a well
An Army general felled by a ski-slope trip
A vegetable seller blown to bits by a bomb
A Baptist missionary swallowed by a cyclone

The haywain hurls them all to their destination
Gritty granules of narratives and bones


Autumn Bride

The truth is I was born frozen, I seldom ever thaw
I wish I had said ‘I’m going! ’ and slammed the door
That windy Autumn
But I needed proof that the world outside was safe

What if I’d gone outside to a firing squad?
For the first time ever, the bullets might have been real


Moon

Once upon a time, the moon lived in a book
When I turned the page, a cow came out of the corn
Like a shining child wearing a golden halo

It surprised me when the moon over the loch was a giant face
It was no use pretending it wasn’t there
It was monstrous, immense, an ogre


Panic

Panic lives in a box
Like a squashed balloon

It smells like roasted butterflies
Like singed cobwebs

It sounds like the silent scream
From a rabbit with myxomatosis

It tastes like barbed wire
Constricting the tongue

It feels like needles
Stuck in the heart’s cushion

It lives in the dark,
A furtive, hidden thing
Drop it, and it races around

Screeching ‘Flee flee! ’
And it seems like your feet are on fire



Ode to Sugar

This sugar
Could be the death of me
In the diabetic minefield that is food
Spread on buttered bread
It’s poor man’s jam

Wasps swoon for it
Bees hunger for it

It’s beaten to a pulp from canes
It’s the essence of slavery
With no trace of the sweat of salt

Stir it in tea, or coffee
It performs its vanishing trick

It turned the Virgin Queen’s teeth
Black as tar


The Day Paul Summers Died

The local grocer slashed the price of butter
Mrs Chang-Lee dropped an earring down the drain
No mail arrived at the house with the whitewashed fence
Neighbours agreed the weather was going to be stormy
The Webster’s daughter cut her first milk tooth
Mrs Bitajee was frying lamb and potatoes
The market was alive with tourist shoppers
The picnic on the green was a disaster
The cat on Crooked Lane was scratching fleas
A sudden wind blew sand along the street
Travellers pitched their vans on the footbhall pitch
‘Whose going to pay for the funeral? ’ the doctor wondered.


Panda-monium

Pandas pee up in the air
Creating a spray for their hair
It’s an odd thing to do
Better urine than poo
That’s why mating ‘tween pandas is rare


The Yak

How I’d love to parade on a yak
With a leg on each side of its back!
If the heavens should rain
You might hear me complain
Has anyone here got a mac?