Wednesday 15 January 2014

First Aid

As a day job, I work in a swimming pool.  Every day we have to deal with some sort of accident, mainly cuts and bruises from children running and slipping over.  It made me think about the body and how it has the amazing power to heal, alongside modern medicine and skilled doctors.  So, I wrote this very short poem, 'First Aid'.  Here's the first draft




First Aid

Knit together my broken skin, cuts next to scars,
lined up like snags in string, like laddered tights
on shredded skin.
A faded mark the only tar, a hint of the power to heal,
perhaps a lump, new tissue to feel.
Thumbs rest as wrists twist, fingers dance with bandages,
stitches, plaster. A doctor, the director, caster,
with an imperfect model to fix,
his patient, his actor.




© Caitriona Hansen



Friday 10 January 2014

Whitby Abbey



In summer I went on holiday to the beautiful Whitby for a week with family.  We had amazing weather (for England!) and after going to Whitby last year and not visiting the Abbey, we had to go and spend some time there this year.   This is a poem about the mysteriousness of the Abbey. 

Whitby Abbey

A stone carcass sits behind a cemetery,
like a superior grave stone, boasting.
A rotting body of broken bones,
feet without legs, no room to grow,
or pattern to fit pelvis to hips,
or mouth to tongue.
No tongue to tell what lies in this beast’s past,
his past now a supple worm, escaped
from its eroding cage,
free to roam into the unknown.
Then, a meeting of past and present,
reason in a recent room,
facts preserved like treasure in a tomb.
They read, and believe, set up their picnics,
no time to grieve.
Grass tickles legs, slips among toes,
fingers that pull it from roots and leave it to lie
and die, as they turn with a fickle smile
and look away, demise in denial,
in the in the cemetery in front of Whitby Abbey.
.

© Caitriona Hansen

Tuesday 7 January 2014

I got published!

A great start to the new year (despite being unable to shake off the festive viruses I have picked up!)

My (favourite) poem has been published on Ellen Phethean's Diamong Twig Press website as January's 'poem of the month'. 

Thanks Ellen and thanks Jean for creating my page.

You can find it here, and the poem is 'Fiction':

http://www.diamondtwig.co.uk/poems/fiction.html


Fiction

I read from trees as the day time ends,
the moon, marble against velvet, shines down,
my secret torch beneath covers extends
to this forest of writing and sound.
Leaves will murmur, not just in the wind,
from tree trunks full of plots and narratives.
The branches are scrawny, that is my script
my drafts, my redrafts. My mistakes will live
in this jungle of thoughts and imitation,
mice scratch words and around me owls sing,
the woodpecker pecking a special citation
into bark as it stores secrets under its wing.
But the most company that I will make
is with a story, and that story will be fake.




© Caitriona Hansen
 

Also, if you haven't heard of/read any of Ellen's poetry, I really recommend it.  Her collection Breath is absolutely brilliant!