Self Portrait in Green

I’ve got hair like beech leaves

hanging down off a bough.

My arms are long horizons,

farm land that stretches out and out.

My belly is one of many rolling fells.

My stretch marks are furrows ploughed

deep into my sides. I’ve got legs like

the moss-covered trunks of long-fallen Oaks.

My eyes are pebbles thick with algae in a shallow beck.

My longing is a Kestrel – hovering,

hovering.

Cumbrian Summer

Surrounded by its

shattered shell,

an egg

lies in the gutter

outside the butchers.

The raw sun

coating the yolk

with the same milky glaze

we saw in the eye

of the lamb we found

caught in a fence,

dead.

___________________

Joshua Judson is a poet from Nottingham. He is a former member of the Mouthy Poets

collective and is a member of the Barbican Young Poets community. His work has appeared

in Magma, The North, Brittle Star, and The Rialto, as well as online at The White Review.