Noel
After Sasha Dugdale
Christmas is coming. December is amber
with last month’s leaves and fairy lights flutter in the high street.
The fir tree beside the Buttercross is naked, fenced-off
by railings anyone could topple – and, look, here they come:
from the pubs and their houses, from their schools and their places of work,
love bulging from carrier bags, and papery stacks of expectations
pulling at pockets, weighing down wallets. I do not mind the carollers –
though I wish I still had a voice I wanted to use – but each year,
when the frost-trimmed ghost of your breath drifts
over my cheeks, I think how short a space we have,
how little time to breathe.
Louise Taylor is co-founder and occasional editor of www.wordsforthewild.co.uk. Originally from Merseyside, she lives in the South Downs and posts pictures of her dog walks on Instagram (sar1skatiger). She gets frustrated with politicians and likes other people’s tweets via @Sar1skaTiger.
Almost Christmas
Your mother’s come to visit,
the first time for years.
She’s mostly in the garden, wearing wellingtons
and a headscarf ringed with horseshoes
knotted beneath her chin
like the Queen’s.
She busies herself amongst the flower beds
says it’s high time the dahlias were lifted,
wonders why the roses bloom so late.
She’s wearing that old brown coat
with a red rust stain on the chest.
You feel the need
to shield her
from your father’s infidelities
judge it’s best she doesn’t know.
You dig,
repot the spindly tree
grown threadbare over time,
ready to bring it in again.
She cocks her head
fixes you with that bright stare
waits for the moment when you turn the teeming earth
sees movement
and flies forward.
She doesn’t follow you indoors
but recites her recipe for Christmas cake
with figs and chocolate,
dark as a midnight heart,
reminds you to
steep the fruit
make a wish
you are a child’s breath
from believing…
Diana Cant is a poet and child psychotherapist. Her poems have been published in various anthologies and magazines, recently including Agenda, The North and Poetry News. She was voted the Canterbury People’s Poet in 2021. Her pamphlet, Student Bodies 1968, was published in 2020 by Clayhanger Press, and her second pamphlet, At Risk – the lives some children live, was published by Dempsey and Windle in 2021.
Wrapping
I was born to a bloodline of wrappers,
larva women who lose shape in layers
of sloppy clothes, who bury their peach skin
in duvets, who bind any bruise or cut.
They parcel sandwiches in paper, inside
foil, polythene, Tupperware. They embalm
saws in brown paper to ward off rust, and
box up chipped jugs and dead lightbulbs.
They hanker for the festive thrill
of fold, cut, stick, label, turning cheap tat
into treasure. They cope with the unwrapping
by smoothing paper for reuse next year.
My folk wrap up the past, skim over
misfitting dates on family trees. Gran wrapped
pain in prayer, Mum wrapped gin in tea towels.
Smiles wrap up hurt, curses wrap cut hearts.
Helen Kay curates a project to support dyslexic poets (fb Dyslexia and Poetry). Her pamphlet, This Lexia & Other Languages was published by V. Press in July 2020.