Oak
It was as if we had ensnared ourselves:
the way your little boy hands
pushed the acorn into the soft loam
and your face looked up to mine
with the unspoken question.
And later a green finger
pushed itself out of the earth
and you measured it year by year,
until gradually the slender stem
became entwined with the fence
and the only way to separate them
would be to take a knife and cut them apart.
*Julia Webb lives in Norwich. She has just completed an MA in Creative Writing at The University of East Anglia. She runs The Norwich Poetry Book Group, writes reviews and is working on her first collection.
Morning Glory
Moving along the track, head full of images of buckskin-shirted
braves ghosting through ancient forests, the boy walks
into sunlight. Swiftly, he steps behind the shadow-line, stock-still,
leaf-dappled, heart singing songs of morning in his ears.
Nothing moves, there’s no birdsong, time hangs by a thread,
like dry leaves spinning in a web as empty as the sky.
The boy watches, feels his world stop, sees rise out of the dewy
glitter, a solitary, golden-haloed hare.
* Ken Head is a regular reviewer for IS&T. Here is his website.
