Sumacs


Words and images © Lizzie Ballagher

Sumacs

Thanks to Gill & Nick, who planted these lovely trees!

Exploding fireworks:
wheels & fractal stars of gold, sienna,
yellow, green & red
with velvet tufts of seed-heads.

All along the dull road’s edge
their candle-flames catch fire.

© Lizzie Ballagher

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November Seascape

The North Kent Coast can be bleak and blustery at this time of year, even with the stark beauty of Reculver Towers in the distance. And so – another haiku for you for November:

tumultuous waves
thick wind and cloud-clotted skies:
November storm breaks

© Lizzie Ballagher

Boston’s Freedom Trail

Even I Revere the Freedom Trail          

Here I am on the eve of July Fourth—

Yes, that Stars & Stripes Forever day—

But the irony’s not lost on me:

A Brit walking Boston’s Freedom Trail.

Thinly the path of red bricks going two by two

Like a column of starved colonial infantrymen

 

Frog-marches me past churches & graveyards

Where men fought & died—from the gold-leaf dome,

Past that bronze beast bearing Revere, the coppersmith

Riding to warn when two lanterns swung high,

Swung high in the loft of Old North Church,

That our Georgian forebears were coming—

 

Marches me past cold-hearted cobbles

Commemorating the massacre of foolhardy youth,

To the Revere-plated hulk rebelliously hunched

In dry dock, the one they named ‘Ironsides’

When shocked British cannonballs

Bounced back, bounced back off the metal hull—

 

Ensnares me, tugs me

All the city miles it snakes its way,

Makes its way—although, whisper it,

I am shamed by ugly history…

However, still I bounce back,

Bounce back through time’s twisting mystery

 

And I’m a mother now to young Americans—

More: a grandmother, too. My line

Of British sight, of independent British fight

Streaks up with a flare of firework sparks

Bursting in free American air in stripes & stars

Over the city the following night.

 

My life, my line, my freedom staked upon it,

Here: I sign my John Hancock.