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Julie Sampson’s poetry is widely published and she’s been listed in various competitions. Her collections are Tessitura, It Was When It Was When It Was and Fivestones. She researches and writes about the lost history of Devon women writers.
by the tips of twigs in the linhay-field hedge.
She reels us, reels us in.
We, her ladybird t-shirted children
slip inside, fit snugly in the hollow
of her branch-nest bower,
swaddled in the coil of her moss-lined palm.
A chattery congregation, tiny twittery finch,
a dormouse, the rarer fritillary –
all pitch in with the chit-chat
of marginals, telling us how much she loves us.
We are her traveller’s joy.
Afraid of losing us
she lathes, then swashes our faces
with her wild-rose leaves,
her willows brush our long-hair tangles
and in the ambient whispers of sweet nothings
we lull to sleep in the canopy’s swing-harmonies –
backed by harps of hawhorn, beech, ash.
Knowing we are hers
we lie on our backs on her oak-leaf bunks
conjuring the scene –
Nancy and Peggy
at the helm
negotiate the Amazonian storm.
first published in Dawntreader in collection Fivestones, Lapwing Publications, 2022.
Collections:
Fivestones, Lapwing Publications, 2022, ISBN 978-1-7391642-7-0;
Tessitura, Shearsman Books, 2013, ISBN 978-1-84861-239-6;
as editor Mary Lady Chudleigh; Selected Poems, Shearsman Books, 2009, ISBN 978-1-84861-048-4
Copyright© of all poems featured on this site remains with the poet
