Lizzie, by Bob Elliott

          Lizzie

Weathered ugly, and crimped with age
into a dull form, subtly faced
as some old carver's dream, she squats
over the embers, sucking in her pipe
the still warm memory of youth foreclosed
by body-labour and the seasons' toil
around the journeying year;
                                of sky unwinding
time in precise spring, knowing where to find
celandine and white violet;
                                time thinned out
in weary, sun-aching potato fields;
                                and time re-made
transparent by the evening fires.


In April dusk the shadowed figures move.
Her son, in wild,half-squalid middle-age
keeps independence in a heap
of stiff bike-skeletons and rusty stoves.His boy,
sullen, foresighted idiot, who knows
the brain's slow maintenance of things unseen,
creeps round and mumbles, gathers kindling-wood,
prophesies weather and steals eggs.
Their broomstick mare mouths what sour grass it can
in waterlogged, stale fields nearby.

Old, scurril-mouthed, foul-minded with collapse,
she mutters to the flame her memories
of seasons swung around the sky
by her handy mate, the bold dark traveller
whose country grave she still maintains
with flowers stolen from householders.

From the deep roots of night
darkness cascades, and she
with eyes of different texture, sees
the hollow centre of the dying fire;  curses, and tries
to kick dead embers back to life.

Comments

[Brian Edwards]

Really like this Bob. Very painterly.
A little heavy on the modifiers perhaps? Just a first impression. I like the opening description very much.

B.