3 Poems by Patrick Williamson

Foxed I was

Insight flashes, inner look
grabs night by the gab, unearths
me from gloom, the ferreted
pack of bunk-tries, nowt
to what flows from thought fox
that pads bracken words,
shows me what I grope for,
black the without-eye, no, no, no.

The light lingers, sight unveils
self, cranny, with-eye,
the no-mans land stretching.
Leaf-bound the voice,
matter, now. Breathe deep,
underbelly, to wit, me
kept buried so long, stirs.
Break cover. Track the scent.


The yew

cannot be touched
its overshadows all mortals

its bark lies in strips
on the rotten earth

its berries splat red stuff
we trample on

its kernel is poison
do not crunch

the yew has withstood
tempests, war, foulness

its needles say
words are mere gusts

its roots converse
with the bedrock

it sought the light
found the other bank

it is not a ghost
it is a shade

but who isn't


Wood

Criss-cross root
enmeshed, dusk

a curtain over white
hides you, watch

me stagger on, slide
on moss, skirting

badly, barbed strands,
my coat snags,

flakes trickle in, show
me untrodden snow,

the copse thickens,
the wood turns dark

Bionote

PATRICK WILLIAMSON was born in Madrid in 1960 and lives near Paris, France. His most recent poetry collections are Locked in, or out?, Red Ceilings Press, and Bacon, Bits, & Buriton, Corrupt Press, both in 2011. He has translated the selected poems of Tunisian poet Tahar Bekri (Inconnues Saisons / Unknown Seasons, L’Harmattan, Paris, 1999) and Quebecois poet Gilles Cyr (The Graph of Roads, Guernica Editions, 2008). He is the editor of The Parley tree, an anthology of poets from French-speaking Africa and the Arab world, (Arc Publications, UK, 2012).