top of page
Search

2 poems by Joe Marsh

  • Editor
  • Feb 21, 2021
  • 1 min read


The Beholder


I covet this house, not far from mine,

shouldered by a hill.

Looks best in mists.


You can glance

through a window to a window and

out the other

side where sometimes bonfire air

ripples like the past.


To covet this house

I must not think it a parasite

nor home for grown-up dolls.


I must not think that if an old mine

fell in beneath

it would not shrug and topple.


Instead I think this house a sleeping child –

past father, tomorrow’s sun –

clinging to hurling earth,

bright breaths from darkness,

mists lifting –



Boys Lost


Mum’s word: (in lonely dale) Two boys, outrun from me –

I looked – and they were gone from me – you haven’t seen them?

(Panic clear, the quiet first flush)


Me: They’re round the corner (he blinks) I’m sure,

they’re there, I think, I’m sure – (he’s walking on)


But there were no voices,

no footprints in the dew.

They were not in the apple tree.

They did not scale a pine.

There was no laughter.

They built no den in their field of steers,

they slung no clay.


I’ve walked on. Somewhere

the boys dance, lumpen-hooved,

their pale mouths move.


__________


Joe Marsh is a writer and teacher based in the Derbyshire Dales. He is Playwright on

Attachment at the Finborough Theatre and First Story Writer in Residence at Landau

Forte College Derby.

 
 
 

Recent Posts

See All
2 poems by Duncan Chambers 

Rules of the Hunt 1. The Boundaries of the Hunt shall not be limited by Time or Space 2. The Choice of the Quarry shall not be Random,...

 
 
 
2 poems by Phoebe Ambrosini Brown

in vocation / 22 She said writing was like sex in that the goal is to keep doing it. Margery Kempe, speaking her book said He lay before...

 
 
 

Comments


bottom of page