Three Poems by Penelope Shuttle

her first-nation name is birthstone

she shuns time-travel

vagaries of the lute
mother and child virginals
that lovely old september road taking the horse and carriage for granted

blessed are the child for she shall name
galaxy and graveyard
back street and backside and every dusty little flower
of Shortwood Common

but too often she fails to speak she fails to speak she fails to speak
even when ‘love’ lords her flat-down on her belly
sticks her to the carpet by her very own blood
who knows where such silences will lead her?

who made thee?

she’s absent like a marsh child,
like a merlyn

by rote the class goes on without her
milk break and playtime likewise

child astride a Wednesday
where the sun-god hides his fell face

oh she’s a kind of cloud-bound book
oh she’s nothing but airy chapters

rainy nouns of her
scampering across her own Arcady

green of day on her back
blue of a blacked eye for her sight

she’s the forest where she stays
to take her ease of life,

where every leaf
owns a pittance of poison

roots thread through thin eyes of the dead
to prevent them travelling back

to the land of the living
where the child is saying her times table

as she has done
in so many of her previous lives

down lullaby lane

beaks of swans
snap up dry crusts poked
from her bossy hand
they bestow on her the evil eye
towpath gathers its belongings
iron bridge stretches
his old wings
the town picks her up
twirls her round sets her down
the long-ago marks time
never goes away
heavy old jets hunker over
the river hurrying
to Runnymede
scabby pigeons roost
under the bridge
crapping for England day and night
this riverbank
could be your forever bed
little one
the risks you take
but you come home all in one piece
ducking through the church porch
past that ugly red church
down the midnight street from Brownies
just like every other little girl
but no your heart’s radiant with spite
your smile’s a razor
the pavement’s on fire beneath your lace-ups
remember, little stricken one?

Penelope Shuttle lives in Cornwall. Her thirteenth collection, Lyonesse, appeared from Bloodaxe Books in June 2021, and was Observer Poetry Book of the Month for July 2021. Lyonesse was longlisted for the Laurel Prize 2022. Shuttle was a judge for the Women Poets’ Prize 2022, and is President of the Falmouth Poetry Group, founded in 1972 by her late husband, poet Peter Redgrove.