Poem
Helen Ivory
RABBIT SEASON
RABBIT SEASON
RABBIT SEASON
Woken by the sharp burnof moonlight on her face
she moves to the window,
sees searchlights unearthing
the season’s rabbits,
then remembers the child.
The last time she’d gone out
she lost her slippers in the river
so now her bare feet carry her
down the stairs, along the hallway
over the patio and into a night
cut with gunshot.
She digs at the edge of the lawn
with a spade first,
then with her hands
to be closer to her work.
By dawn, there are little mounds of earth,
but still no child.
She tidies herself up in time
to make Bluebeard’s porridge.
She watches him emerge from the fields,
his mossy boots soaked with dew,
a string of rabbit pelts at his waist;
all their open eyes.
© 2012, Helen Ivory
This poem will appear in the collection Waiting for Blebeard, to be published by Bloodaxe Books in 2013.
Helen Ivory
(United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, 1969)
Helen Ivory is a poet and artist who, together with her husband Martin Figura, runs the Norwich-based literary organisation, Café Writers. Written on the wide canvas of the everyday, her poems create small, eerie resonances in the spaces just beyond what happens.
Poet-critic James Sutherland-Smith has said: “A visually precise poet, with the gift of creating stunning images with an economy of...
Poet-critic James Sutherland-Smith has said: “A visually precise poet, with the gift of creating stunning images with an economy of...
Poems
Poems of Helen Ivory
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RABBIT SEASON
Woken by the sharp burnof moonlight on her face
she moves to the window,
sees searchlights unearthing
the season’s rabbits,
then remembers the child.
The last time she’d gone out
she lost her slippers in the river
so now her bare feet carry her
down the stairs, along the hallway
over the patio and into a night
cut with gunshot.
She digs at the edge of the lawn
with a spade first,
then with her hands
to be closer to her work.
By dawn, there are little mounds of earth,
but still no child.
She tidies herself up in time
to make Bluebeard’s porridge.
She watches him emerge from the fields,
his mossy boots soaked with dew,
a string of rabbit pelts at his waist;
all their open eyes.
This poem will appear in the collection Waiting for Blebeard, to be published by Bloodaxe Books in 2013.
RABBIT SEASON
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