Prize-winning poet Margaret Gleave grew up in Oldham and went on to Leicester University where she gained her degree in classics.

She taught English and music for many years and has lived in Southport most of her life. Margaret also takes a keen interest in art and paintings.

She has judged poetry competitions for Writing Magazine and Southport Writers’ Circle.

Margaret was the winner of the 2011 Southport Poet Of The Year and received her prize from Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy

WEATHER EYE

MARGARET GKEAVE

ISBN 978-1-907401-52-7

56 pages

£5.99

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Tel: 44 (0)845 458 9910

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First Fall

We reach the wood as early flurries
whirl like wood-ash and splinter
into flash-points in our headlights.

We walk to the trees as the sky
spills out salt grains of stars.
Black limbs now flounce white frills.

Coming home, we climb our steps.
We stamp the light from our boots;
brush diamonds from shoulders.

We’ll remember this night:
its grace notes repeating
in the hollow dark.

Mr Echo

She was always a bit of a flirt.
I knew that when I married her.
She’s cooked her goose this time – drooling
over some self-obsessed pretty boy,
gods’ gift to nymph-
omaniacs.

And my word, could she talk for Greece –
yakkety-yak from morning till night,
until the queen of mean, her, Hera,
shut her up. Now she can only repeat
the ends of what she hears.
That’s you seen to
…obscene too.

Anyway, back to Toy Boy.
He won’t even look at her; spends
all day bent over a pool of his own desire.
She stalks him, pines away,
reduced to bones, then a shadow of herself,
finally a whining voice repeating,
repeating. Do not follow me
…follow me.

Some say he killed himself
for unrequited love. All lies.
I stabbed him in the heart, and from his blood
grew a white flower, Narcissus
…Sissy

Over

A dead bird lies festering in my roses;
their sweetness masking its miasma.

Flies quicken him, a blue-green gloss;
lay eggs inside this feathered womb. Soon

the corpse will seethe with maggots white as rice
gorging on rot;

white as the rice thrown at our wedding;
white as the rice I used to bake

every day for puddings in a marriage
dead like the bird in my rose bed.

Anatomy Lesson
 
In the dim light of tallow and the stink
of grave wax, they draw and name each bone,
study how muscle flows round joint and tendon;
translate them into paint, flesh out the human form.

With block and pulley, they lift and weigh;
hack through sternum, crack each rib, peel back
skin to open up the torso; remove each organ;
note heft and mass; replacing liver, spleen et al;
sew up the cavity. The corpse is weighed
once more; weighs less.

The difference is
the measure of the soul.
 

March

Rain slanting windows; a mother waits,
peers over the half-net curtains.
Rain on the cobbles; 4 o’clock
and Davey will soon clatter home from school.

Kettle on the hob spits beads
that play tag across the hotplate. Fish tonight for tea
and Gran is by the sink having a fag, tapping ash
into the plug-hole, her lips a thin line.

The old house settles, waiting
for a boy who’ll never tidy his bedroom,
never finish his Lego space station, never
buy Maltesers at Mo’s corner shop.

The trees swell their buds;
earth slakes its thirst, ferns unfurl,
cover a small boy’s body;
this northern rain.
 
No-one Thanked Him

Every morning, even on Sundays,
Dad was first up in the splinter of cold
to conjure a blaze from banked-up fires,
polished three pairs of shoes
lined up by the settle the night before -

heavy boots for work-days, tough,
dust-grimed, hard to clean;
Mum’s black rubber-soled nurse shoes,
comfortable, soundless; and my school tie-ups,
buffed to a conker-shine.

Weekends, he cleaned our Sunday Best,
an easier task; thin-soled leather,
navy blue courts and my going-to-church
black brogues with tassels.

Every winter morning I woke in the dark,
listened to frost ferns whispering at my window.
I sniffed soot-filled air.
He called when the fires were driving out the cold.
I dressed to the smell of toast,
a chair scraping on tiles, kettle clattering on the hob.
Every morning.

Margarita

Rim the glass with salt

Shiver in night airports,
the tired slog to the old town.

Pour tequila, triple sec and lime juice into shaker

Our room, green-shuttered,
guards its cool from the day.

Shake with cracked ice

The window protests, sheds flakes
of iron rust; opens to red-tiled roofs.

Trickle into glass

The off-key brass band tunes up
to echo of street vendors.

Drink and remember

bite of lime, crunch of ice,
tequila at the back of my throat.

Tomorrow hasn’t happened yet.

Estonian Has No Future Tense

Wolves prowl the forest,
witches too; and farmhouses darken, dense
with smoke; doors are open, cabbage is cold in the pot.

Soldiers come in the night, in wagons, in snow;
they promise a new life over the border;
freedom bought with jewels and gold.

We go willingly, believing;
journeying farther north
to the frozen lands.

A half-packed case, a child’s shoe
lie on the cold path.
Doors close

on scent of wood smoke.
The rough meal of barley gruel congeals.
Wolves feast on our pigs.

Wake-up Call

She grew up on Cloud Nine, in cuckoo land,
blew rings round pipes of dreams, ate fairy floss,
was glued to cut-out pictures, tales of grand
princesses, castles, Disney-bright green grass.

She lived in crenellated towers, dressed up
in gold-spun straw, imagined Snow White waist
and waited for her prince, full stop
on happy-ever-after. Then the taste
 
turned sour; she learned that Santa was a lie.
Rats drew her coach; glass slipper didn’t fit.
Her prince deserted, said he’d rather die
than marry her. ‘Wise up,’ he said. ‘Life’s shit.’

And so she spurns fool’s gold for good. Instead,
embraces frogs and puts a pea to bed.

Stepping Out Of Line

Sometimes it’s good to bend the rules, escape
geometry of streets and walls; confines
of cubes and squares – all rigid, linear shapes.

Here there are curves, migrating dunes refined
and planed where thoughts can loop round trails of gull,
follow the devious path of lizard, signs

that hold their secret in the phi of shell,
rewriting sand, erasing at wind’s whim.
So which is south or north? You cannot tell

until you climb and see horizon’s rim;
earth’s curvature where ocean meets the sky.
Breathe in the salt, hear west wind’s thrumming spin

of spray on pewter shore at lowest tide.
It could be any season here – cold spring
or mildest winter. Scrawking gulls are wired

to cloud, wheel white, then grey, on newsprint wings.
A smudge of tanker sails from port to sea.
Dry marram grasses sift the sand and bring

a welcome break in strait-laced rules, just be
outside the lines, among the dunes – be me.