Three poems by Sarah Barr
A LITTLE PERSONAL ETERNITY
The house dreams of white doves on its roof,
remembers a time of coal fires in hearths,
old people in cotton hats under apple trees,
a girl who yanks open sash windows,
shouts, and acts funny plays on the terrace.
The house, too, longs to be an actor.
At night, it sinks deeper into itself –
shifting to clay, trees, slate, and water.
The girl dreams of flying from a bridge
over a ruined house she once saw
as she walked her dog across the moors.
A few atoms in her cells remember
a time before houses, birds, and even earth
as she spins dreaming into space, the universe.
PRAWN COCKTAIL
She’d heard enough of the argument and how
whether frozen, fresh or shelled, it was
impossible to find a succulent prawn.
Now they were tangled in chopped lettuce.
She couldn’t resist dipping her finger in
to suck the sweet Marie-Rose sauce.
Like a jilted girlfriend or abandoned baby,
an extra prawn hung over the rim
of each glass bowl on its skinny stem.
Her mother said the dinner would be a disaster,
Chicken Kiev with its whiff of ‘The Spy Who
Came in From the Cold’ gave the wrong message
and the Gateau Mont Blanc reminded her
of the time he went away on business.
‘Business?’ her mother screamed along the landing.
There was a ring-ring at the door,
and she wondered if they’d stop shouting upstairs.
She took each prawn from its perch and swallowed –
they were salty, plump and a little crunchy –
just as her mother appeared smiling, and wearing
stiletto heels and a green satin dress.
CHRISTMAS, 2020
The leaning apple tree
is still as high
as the upstairs window.
Saved from the builders,
now it repays
with sharp, unnamed fruit
we pick with claw and net
on a long pole.
A woodpecker delves
into the crumbling trunk.
Unless we remember to tie
round the green band
moth caterpillars crawl up
to gorge themselves.
On summer nights
apples thud an erratic beat
on grass and stone.
A dark shadow keeps growing
and sucking the branches.
We were going to pull down
the clump but there seemed
little point in mistletoe
in the hall this Christmas.
If the tree falls
we’ll chop its wood
to warm us in the cold.