Decorate our tree in ASD
From Here to Epiphany
I must wear four scarves, touch-whispery in tinsel,
to wrap – no – not quite tight enough
to cover the trunk in shine.
Let me leave the room for my staccato happenings,
test flickerings of white wee lights. Off. On. Off. On
Off. Drop baubles into my make-a-bowl hands;
watch my face zoom. Big me. Wee me. Big.
I hang forty-five things on wisping strings,
In. Out. Well-grouped. Dad says –
but not like that, on just one branch– off again.
Forty-five things spin from the scratchytwig tips.
Dad unsquints the star. I bounce. Three times. Sorted.
Mum comes in, so pleased with my work and amazed
by the window’s thrown-open cold. Then
she breathes in, knows
how the whole tree stinks of Lynx Africa,
I sprayed to match me exactly.
Beth McDonough’s poetry appears in many places; she reviews in DURA. Lamping for pickled fish was published by 4Word. She’s currently Makar of the FWS.
I give you a paperweight
(for Frank)
Follow the strands
of aqua, lilac, white.
Meditate on the shape
of each forever bubble,
Hold the globe,
all five hundred grammes of it.
Fingertip find imperfections
invisible to your eyes lost in light.
The glass is ground,
roughened so it can’t just roll away.
Notice the colours from the base.
How they make more sense this way up.
There is one thread of blue.
Sarah L Dixon is based in a Huddersfield valley with her son, Frank (12) Sarah hosted an Arts council funded Quiet Compere live and online tour in 2022. Her most recent love affair is with Morecambe Bay.
28th July 2021
Mist blankets the beach, blending
the horizon to something of a mystery.
The air whitens to peace,
the sun, our star, glows a yellow lamp-bulb.
Gulls call the sad, glad news,
trace holy ghosts in simple pilgrimages
above the seal-grey sea, calling
holy, holy, holy are the days.
We’ve brought gifts from the Christmas
none of us could spend together,
sit to open them on sand warm enough
for a camel’s footprint.
Later, there’ll be room at the inn.
Twelve will sit at the next table, and we’ll witness
a father reach to take his silent daughter’s hand.
We’ll eat together at last, drink water, drink wine.
Liz Lefroy was winner of the 2016 Café Writers Prize, the 2011 Roy Fisher Prize, Runner Up in the 2017 Wigtown Poetry Competition, and highly commended in the Bridport Prize 2015 and Aurora Poetry Competition 2017. She has published four poetry pamphlets, most recently GREAT MASTER / small boy, which explores motherhood and music through a journey across her son’s childhood, and Europe, in search of Beethoven.