The Implantations (sycamore)
Nobody tells them this,
nobody says
it’s time to uncurl
the fat green clocksprings
of their hearts and no one
invited them to do it here,
the order of it unexplained
untaught, the hunt for light
the root for damp,
how it happens all at once
synchronised and swimming up
the purest gesture they can name
opening their cotyledon arms
blowing on so-pink-they’re-artificial stems,
they press into the unexpected air
not knowing not to expect
not knowing not to
not knowing
The Implantations (beech mast)
Nobody dropped them here,
nobody put
their hooked and hungry
eaks across the path and no one
asked their clicking tongues
for gossip on each step,
or compelled the jostle
for attention in their spikes:
triangular or angular
discomforts to each other, each blind
percussion barren as the next.
A harsh nostalgia for the tightest
vowel their teeth can bite
rattling their vacant husks,
scolding us at every turn,
not hearing
not hearing themselves
not hearing themselves hurt
The Implantations (cartridge paper)
Nothing is so ready.
Nothing spreads
itself so wide, so thick,
so deeper than the earth and fatter
than the air, eager in each fibre
so to blot itself and suck
give suck through all this fickle
capillarity so to spot itself
with any homing seed or smut
that drifts in through the clouds,
the thunderheads
of blood and falling in
so smally, small
as satan on his long long drop
against the parapets
of heaven.
Not waiting but not reaching up
not waiting but not reaching
not waiting but
Ian McEwen’s pamphlet The Stammering Man was a winner in the Templar competition 2010 and he was highly commended in the national poetry competition 2011. His first full collection will be published by Cinnamon Press in 2013. He is a member of the Magma poetry board. He lives in Bedford and organises the Ouse Muse open mic.