Magpie Season
The lawn is a chequerboard
this morning – all black and white.
No hint of a bluejay’s marquetry
or the elegant tailoring of a wood
pigeon nibbling at the elderberries.
The grass sings nursery rhymes,
sunlight filtering through the trees
offers to tell my fortune. The cats
are skulking behind closed curtains,
fearful of these travellers.
Come tomorrow, they will have moved
on. Their left behind treasures will glint
from the soil beds: a silver ear,
the curled up shell of a tin can, an emerald
bead blessing the land with its light.
The Hidden
Our love was never
meant to be found.
Our love was supposed
to be like the first rosehips
of the summer: fat and explosive,
staining the air with unburnt sugar.
Private detectives of owls
were not intended
to be on our trail.
The moon peering
with its magnifying glass
shouldn’t have been on the case.
The foxes rummaging
for the past skeletons
of our failed attempts
should have been distracted
from the scent.
The rain never had our best
intentions in mind,
letting us run through
while calling the authorities.
We are jailed within
each other while the ivy
runs free and brilliant,
sparking weeds that hiss
and weep at all hours of the day.
Late Summer
Your name
drips from the last
of the rosehips.
It crackles
like leftover fireworks
on the lawn,
welcomes autumn
through the blackberries
offering their wares,
sends messages
through the blackbirds
saying I am here, this is my song.
Listen.
Christian Ward is a UK-based poet with recent work in Dust, Free the Verse, Loch Raven Review, Cider Press Review and elsewhere. He won the first 2024 London Independent Story Prize for poetry and the 2024 Maria Edgeworth Festival Poetry Competition.