Poplars in the Mist

A crow’s eye weighs the view:
poplars and their spiky layers,
mist – all froth & pomp & wisp.

I am more poplar than mist.
I am there in each defiant branch:
stalky, not willowy, standing my ground.

I am always reaching for you
& the next you – the one that comes after –
the one that stops to know my soul,
but misses a dot in its dot-to-dot outline.

This is the you I struggle to know,
yet with poplars, I know my place.
I am their sister, more so now it’s winter
and mist gives us hair like drifting snow.

K. S. Moore’s debut poetry collection What frost does under a crescent moon is available from The Seventh Quarry Press. Achievements include being selected for Poetry Ireland Introductions 2022 and placing third in the Waterford Poetry Prize. @ksmoorepoet on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter

Cathnor Park 4pm, Wednesday

It’s too cold to scavenge
these frosty nights, so a fox,
bold as you like in the lengthening
stares at me from ten metres –
a handsome beast in ruddy health,
fully furred, brush bushy,
braving the light.

Braving the light
fully furred, brush bushy,
a handsome beast in ruddy health
stares at me from ten metres –
bold as you like in the lengthening
these frosty nights, so, a fox.
It’s too cold to scavenge.

Kate Noakes’ two most recent poetry publications are  Goldhawk Road, Two Rivers Press, 2023 and Chalking the Pavement, Broken Sleep Books, 2024  boomslangpoetry.blogspot.com

Snow Globe

Picture this:
little witch girl
in Alaskan wilderness.

Ferny dendrites on glass.
Sleet as far as the dome
can go. She hears the big
in the sky. A whiteness
of swans skim on a rink
like one of those music
boxes you tame
with a key.

Footprints colossal as
father’s in his waders
and twiggier ones:
a silver chain
of sparrow’s toes.
All the hedgerows are
milk-dipped. She likes
to watch the waxwings
landing.

There are trees with no
clothes on and the cold
upon the valley is
a strip tease. She sees wolf,
mink, coyote, fox. Flakes
spin and drop. It is 2°c.

River ice cracks
beneath the weight
of spectres.

Rachael Smart has a thing about chemises and slips. She is never without fingerless gloves or a paperback. @SilkOctavia_