Artichokes and an Olive Grove

MANDY PANNETT

 

Your spirit slumps in the saddle.

Easier, you say, to look down not up

when your weary head like an over-blown poppy

droops on its stem.

 

But down is where all shadows meet,

where even the rays of a posthumous sun

fail in their glitter and reach.

 

What can I offer to make you look up?

A far-away island seeded with hope?

No, you reply, island is another word

for homesick, for small torn edges of sands

where wale pods beach.

 

A small farm then in the backhills?

Old Laertes lived there: cuttlebone flat

in his moods. You too could hoe around the vine

think back to the naming of trees.

 

You are starting to un-slump.

In those hills is an olive grove

and a plot of land to grow artichokes on

where we shall put that donkey out to graze

 

Second Prize winner, Build Africa Poetry Competition 2012