No craft is learned quickly.
Old wisdom declares that it’s an insipid thing that falls into place too easily. All the same, I still hope (growing greyer by the week) to find a publisher one day for my poems. Meanwhile, I just keep writing. To the select band of followers of this blog: thank you for your encouragement, wheresoever you may be!
Even So
Like a wren without its mate
Singing against the darkness of a late spring dawn
And trusting that another bird may hear,
may yet reply;
Or like a wife on the harbour wall alone,
Yearning for a shadow on the summer sea,
Who waits in weary hope for the fisherman’s return:
For the curved white bow of his sail,
the heave and haul of silver darlings;
Or like a thirsty, burnt-out farmer
Squinting at the ruthless sky to spy
A speck or fleecy strand of cloud
Promising longed-for rain—autumn’s relief
Over wilted wheat & drooping barley,
over shrivelled yields & pod-cracked fields;
Or like that old beloved chestnut mare
They kept for kindness’ sake,
Believing she was barren,
Who wickers for joy at the winter hay-net,
Nudging twin colts as they nuzzle her:
The first soft-eyed foals on stilted legs
she ever bore.
So, even so, I set these poems before you.
And while only the frailest faith survives:
that a pair will be born to a barren mare,
that drying grain will know sweet rain,
that love will burn on a seafarer’s return,
that—like the music of all the love-lorn
in the greenwood’s darkest springtime morn—
these poems may take wings and fly,
I shall continue writing by and by.
Words and image © Lizzie Ballagher
