Christmas Special 2021
Sarah Connor
Sarah Connor is a retired psychiatrist, originally from South Yorkshire, now living in North Devon, surrounded by mud and apple trees. She has lived and worked in several countries, and plans to travel more once the pandemic ends. Her poetry has been published by Black Bough and Irisi, among others. Sarah was nominated for the Pushcart Prize by Black Bough Poetry in 2021 and runs a poetry advent calendar on her blog.
The Silver Branch project recognised a significant body of work contributed to Black Bough poetry of excellence. We are privileged to showcase this work.
Blog: fmmewritespoems.wordpress.com
Twitter: @sacosw
Instagram: sarah_sandytoes
Christmas Angel
Next-door's angel has gone up again,
her spread wings flapping silently
all night. I wake and see her,
keeping her vigil - as if love, not light
flowed through her veins.
How brave she is, out in the cold and dark,
bearing witness to our midnight hopes.
Christmas Eve
We slipped away from the golden warmth
into the silvery night, looking for winter.
The cat had left a dainty trail for us,
and a robin had scritch-scratched a line
on the white card of the path.
Further up the lane, the mark
of two wings in the snow.
"Owl" we said, wisely, nodding at each other
knowing an angel
would be more deadly and more beautiful.
Winter
Everything cuts in winter -
wind, rain, hail - everything.
Winter comes equipped
with knives, all shapes, all sizes -
the gull's wing a smooth scimitar,
the hedge bristling with stilettoes,
even the robin's song -
so sweet
so sharp
January
The pheasant sits
in the ploughed field, a
note of music
Pech Merl: footprints in the cave
Your head came halfway up my arm –
too old to hold my hand, but young enough
to lean against me. The cave smelled cold.
The footprints could have been our own,
mother and child, walking together
out of the deep past, into the present day,
utterly human. We could have touched them
as they walked past us, hand in hand,
into their future,
disregarding ours.
Carbon
Down in the perma-night
The dark has its own gravity:
That great weight pressing
Moonless rivers
Buried forests
Trapped sunlight
Deep deeper deepest
Where the inklight is so heavy
A hundred miles down
The darkness crushes itself,
rebirthing
Into the fire
At the diamond’s heart.
Hare, poised
Even her stillness
contains movement -
each muscle quivering
with the old knowledge
of swift dash - glance back -
long loop - leap free -
the ecstasy of flight.
Handschmeichler is the German for worrystone
I have been put away –
my blood has been measured,
looped into skeins – the bright blood
and the dark. My skin
is folded like old lace,
displayed. My flesh is neatly piled,
like wooden bricks. My bones
are laid out, paired, symmetrical,
tidied.
And still I long
to be held in your fist,
rubbed by your thumb
warmed by your warmth.
In the house of the dead
In the house of the dead
I became a lizard.
I had no choice. There was
no catalogue, no menu –
only my soft skin scaling,
feet curling, fingers clawing,
forked tongue flickering
over cracked lips –
only my craving for sunlight,
my sprawling need for heat –
I became a lizard
In the house of the dead.
Birds
So many birds here –
white, grey, blue –
their feathers
carved in stone:
quartz, flint, slate.
They fly down
corridors, press
against windows,
and they sing of love
and pain and grief,
but mostly love.
The year of my first chemo
You built a wall
and, yes, symbolic
sheltering us inside
keeping out the world –
but maybe you just wanted
to feel that ache
in your hands, your arms –
to walk into the kitchen,
sweaty, dirty,
stretching out your back
to feel your body
as a living thing.
After surgery
I dreamed my breasts
were full of milk:
that I was feeding
a suckling child,
my angry child
my gentle child
the quiet warmth
4 am dyad
What else could cause
that tightening?
That almost pain?
I woke to emptiness,
a healing scar.
My poems are shrinking
Soon I will write a poem
that’s a single word
ice
milk
cloud
leave you to do the work,
with your map of dreams and memories,
your tales heard once,
your stories that have sunk into the bone
blade
flame
gull
Owl
Some nights the stars feel very close. Tonight they are impossibly distant, hung high in the dark sky. The moon is a silver sickle, and there is frost coming. The call of the owl makes me pause, and cock my head to listen again. She is part of this chill night – the soundtrack to winter.
We don’t see her often, though we hear her. Sometimes she swoops ahead of us down the lane, massive and silent. Once we found the imprint where her wings had kissed the snow as she plunged her sharp talons into some small mammal. The spring this year was mild and dry, so our owl will eat well this winter.
Flower faced sister
Swooping silent bringing death
Calling frost and stars
Why do I write?
The word "why" in the English language has a double meaning - "for what reason?" and "with what purpose?". So why do I write?
I spent my professional life listening to people's stories, and helping them construct them in ways that made sense to them and to others. That meant listening intently, testing out ideas and being very precise with language. So when it came to thinking about my own life, writing it out seemed to make sense. I started off journaling and blogging - but, honestly, I bored myself with what I was writing - I couldn't expect anyone else to read it. Then I decided to do NaPoWriMo, and the whole poetry thing just made sense for me. I was paying attention to the world, I was making sense of it, I was using language precisely. It was really exciting.
What's my purpose in writing, then? What keeps me going? I'm not an academic poet, I don't have much technical knowledge, but I have read the odd book on poetry over the last few years. The thing that stayed with me was a few lines from The Haiku Handbook by William Higginson: it is hard to tell you how I am feeling. Perhaps if I share with you the event that made me aware of these feelings, you will have similar feelings of your own.
I want my readers to stand next to me and to experience something of what I'm experiencing. I want them to feel, to know, to understand something about the world or about themselves. Maybe even about me.