{"id":943,"date":"2010-12-28T11:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-12-28T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=943"},"modified":"2020-12-14T11:14:53","modified_gmt":"2020-12-14T11:14:53","slug":"the-fourth-day-of-christmas-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/the-fourth-day-of-christmas-2\/","title":{"rendered":"The Fourth Day of Christmas"},"content":{"rendered":"

Another Christmas<\/span>

\n <\/span>

\nLast Sunday before Christmas. Blue sky, transparent afternoon moon.<\/span>

\nPlasma screens are flying off the shelves of Woolworths.<\/span>

\nOn the hill, brown smoke billows from the hospital incinerator;<\/span>

\nbody parts, foetal matter.<\/span>

\n <\/span>


\nDan Wyke<\/span>

<\/p>\n

28 December<\/span>
 <\/span>
At shadowless noon<\/span>
every fence post has a muffin top,<\/span>
 <\/span>
rooks have phoned in sick,<\/span>
huffed up like draught excluders,<\/span>
 <\/span>
and even the ivy can't be arsed<\/span>
to scavenge the grey photons.<\/span>
 <\/span>
A buzzard is quartering her day,<\/span>
checking the thank you letters<\/span>
 <\/span>
of small creatures, whose best joined-up<\/span>
smokes out of novelty pencils;<\/span>
 <\/span>
when she finds a phrase that pleases<\/span>
she'll stoop to put a red tick on the snow.<\/span>


Nick MacKinnon <\/span>



Mum's Garden<\/span>
December<\/span>
 <\/span>
Okay to the thirteen green parakeets<\/span>
on the bare apple tree<\/span>
still noisily celebrating their ancestral<\/span>
break-out from the bird sanctuary.<\/span>
 <\/span>
Okay to the woodpecker <\/span>
with red cockade<\/span>
feasting on lawn grubs<\/span>
for over an hour.<\/span>
 <\/span>
Okay, of course,<\/span>
to the usual thrushes, magpies,<\/span>
crows and reservoir-seagulls –<\/span>
 <\/span>
But, Mum, you have to be kidding –<\/span>
 <\/span>
at the very top of the tallest fir tree,<\/span>
one ungainly fairy <\/span>
on the green xmas tree,<\/span>
hunch-perched heron surveying<\/span>
the edibility scene –<\/span>
 <\/span>
(no garden hereabouts<\/span>
without its goldfish pond ) –<\/span>
 <\/span>
contemptuous<\/span>
of  crows and  seagulls<\/span>
ganging up to shout –<\/span>
 <\/span>
No Herons Allowed!<\/span>
 <\/span>
taking his time,<\/span>
then launching, all gateleg-table foldable legs,<\/span>
long beak and greybeard wings,<\/span>
into the breakfast-time sky, <\/span>
 <\/span>
grace under pressure indeed\u2026<\/span>
 <\/span>
Who\u2019d think this treetop gawk<\/span>
would have such ballet-work in him,<\/span>
our light-fantastic visitant?<\/span>


Penelope Shuttle<\/span>

<\/p>\n



* Dan Wyke<\/span><\/a> is a winner of a Gregory Award for poetry and his new collection <\/span>Waiting for the Sky to Fall<\/span> is available from Waterloo Press<\/span>

*Nick MacKinnon<\/span> is a teacher in Winchester. His audiobook Storytelling<\/span>
\n read by Stephen Campbell Moore and Juliet Stevenson appears in the new
\nyear. His poems have won major prizes in the Bridport, Plough, Edwin
\nMorgan and MacLellan Festival competitions. <\/span>

<\/font>
\n* Penelope Shuttle's<\/span>
\n last collection Redgrove\u2019s Wife<\/span>
\n (Bloodaxe Books,
\n2006), was shortlisted for both the Forward Prize and T.S. Eliot Prize.
\nHer latest collection is Sandgrain and
\n Hourglass<\/span><\/a> (Bloodaxe Books,
\n2010).
\n<\/font>

<\/span>

 
\n<\/span>
<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Another Christmas   Last Sunday before Christmas. Blue sky, transparent afternoon moon. Plasma screens are flying off the shelves of Woolworths. On the hill, brown smoke billows from the hospital incinerator; body parts, foetal matter.   Dan Wyke 28 December At shadowless noonevery fence post has a muffin top, rooks have phoned in sick,huffed up like draught […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-943","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-twelve-days-of-christmas-2010"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/943","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=943"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/943\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23921,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/943\/revisions\/23921"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=943"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}