Poem
Jean Bleakney
THE FAIRYTALE LAND OF UM
THE FAIRYTALE LAND OF UM
THE FAIRYTALE LAND OF UM
Between the supercilious litany of ultraand the negative hordes of un
is the magical realism of Um.
Complete with a sense of journey
(from the...um... hesitant opening
to the self-assurance of umpteen);
and sense of place - Central Italy
with its earth of red-brown oxides
and good-versus-evil flora of cow parsley,
angelica, sweet cicely, hemlock and giant hogweed
whose umbel flower parts are spoked and rayed
as umbrellas. Rain is assumed... or sun.
So is conflict: visors, shields, and umiaks
(open boats crewed by Inuit women)
not to mention slaughtered deer and umble pie.
Eclipsed, in minor roles, the umpire
and that German vowel modifier.
Not so, the flapping, stork-like umbrette:
a roc of a bird and in the wrong continent.
Not so, that lacy-leafed jungle of umbellifers
adumbrating each other’s flat-topped inflorescenses,
in whose shadowy undergrowth squats umbrage,
that navel-gazing familiar:
umbrage, the giving and taking of it.
© 2003, Jean Bleakney
From: The Poet's Ivy
Publisher: Lagan Press,
From: The Poet's Ivy
Publisher: Lagan Press,
Jean Bleakney
(United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, 1956)
Jean Bleakney was born in Newry, Co. Down and now lives in Belfast where she works in a garden centre. She studied biochemistry at Queen’s University, Belfast, and only turned to writing in her 30s, after the birth of her children. Her developing passion for poetry coincided with a developing passion for horticulture – many of her poems concern themselves with plants and the symbolic associatio...
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THE FAIRYTALE LAND OF UM
Between the supercilious litany of ultraand the negative hordes of un
is the magical realism of Um.
Complete with a sense of journey
(from the...um... hesitant opening
to the self-assurance of umpteen);
and sense of place - Central Italy
with its earth of red-brown oxides
and good-versus-evil flora of cow parsley,
angelica, sweet cicely, hemlock and giant hogweed
whose umbel flower parts are spoked and rayed
as umbrellas. Rain is assumed... or sun.
So is conflict: visors, shields, and umiaks
(open boats crewed by Inuit women)
not to mention slaughtered deer and umble pie.
Eclipsed, in minor roles, the umpire
and that German vowel modifier.
Not so, the flapping, stork-like umbrette:
a roc of a bird and in the wrong continent.
Not so, that lacy-leafed jungle of umbellifers
adumbrating each other’s flat-topped inflorescenses,
in whose shadowy undergrowth squats umbrage,
that navel-gazing familiar:
umbrage, the giving and taking of it.
From: The Poet's Ivy
THE FAIRYTALE LAND OF UM
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