Today’s choice
Previous poems
Philip Rush
Rolled-Up Sleeves
Tom’s advice, mind you,
was to drink hot chocolate
last thing at night
on a garden bench
beneath the moon.
So, we sat there.
Our eyes grew accustomed
to monochrome
and to the unusual grammars
of darkness.
A hazel-nut or two
fell from the tall & leafy tree.
Occasionally
there was
a rustle in the hedge.
Our hot chocolate
perfumed the garden
with a touch of the exotic.
The air did not feel cold
on our bare arms.
Philip Rush was born in Middlesex. Big Purple Garden Paintings was short-listed for the Aldeburgh First Collection Prize; he has also collaborated with the photographer Andrew Fusek Peters. His most recent book of poems is Camera Obscura from The Garlic Press.
On the Eleventh Day of Christmas, we bring you Kathryn Alderman, Joanne Key, Fiona Larkin
New Year 2022 Lips kissed at midnight, we skitter home, twist off rimy pavements like kittens on black ice, think how returning takes forever. We try to squint at the twelvemonth ahead but our eyeballs are bobbed plums, rollicking spirit-levels...
On the Tenth Day of Christmas, we bring you Sue Burge, Marie-Louise Eyres, Sue Finch
Clara is just another girl, dreaming in her deep pink world of sugar mice and sugar plums. Young enough to fall for the charms of clockwork and blue-eyed dolls with ballerina sherbet swirls of layered net; light enough to sit on uncles’ laps,...
On the Ninth Day of Christmas, we bring you Adam Warne, Ken Evans, Marcelle Newbold
Nativity ‘Lullay, lullay.’ Can you hear her sing, so far from here, crouched on bloodied straw, beside the phlegmatic ox? ‘Lullay, lullay, my little child, may we know peace tonight.’ She sings, and learns, against her weary heart, the peace he...
On the Eighth Day of Christmas, we bring you Leslie Ingram, Sarah James, Ruth Aylett
Elbow Room We travel home (ignoring that we lost it years ago) in time for turkey, mistletoe, for ear-worms to re-cast the brain. We check out the reindeer hanging on the third branch up, its always spot, now single antlered and rubbed free of...
On the Seventh Day of Christmas, we bring you Laura McKee, Claire Walker, Louisa Campbell
mid-winter ice storm Lake Mendota photos of Joni Mitchell by Joel Bernstein no river but this lake and not getting carried away she tested if it would hold her across the whole iced breadth of it etched ever widening circles arms stretched out...
On the Sixth Day of Christmas, we bring you Gillian Laker, Julie Maclean, Amlanjyoti Goswami
The Twelvey Night Mummers I must have been nearly nine when the Green Man and good Saint George deranged our winter parish. A gilded Turk and terrifying horse, the doctor with his bottle and bag, coaxed something very old to curl around the...
On the Fifth Day of Christmas, we bring you Finola Scott, K.S Moore, Scott Elder
Christmas Magic The moths have got to Jesus, chewed holes in his swaddling robes. Mary as ever is trying to stay calm though Joseph is showing the strain. Children adore the cloud-soft lambs, the sparkly angels my Mum crafted. Each year there's...
On the Fourth Day of Christmas, we bring you Oliver Comins, Maggie Mackay, Bob Cooper
24th December Late Shift, Christmas Eve Twelve reindeer wander among these lean trees. Muffled light, seeping through layers of conifer, is reaching them as snowflakes, floating gently to settle on backs and over their dappled grazing. Above them,...
On the Third Day of Christmas, we bring you Carole Bromley, Janet Dean, Pat Edwards
Silver Lining after Billy Collins What a relief it is not to be boarding that Qantas plane, the hours of boredom, the cramp, the endless movies and then that sudden view of Sydney Opera House. How much better to be pounding the streets wearing a...