3 poems by Graham Mort

Water Tigers

Unexpected of course

and scary when your mind

scales them up

these predaceous diving

beetle larvae

hoiked from the sump

of the garden pond

with mud and weed's

dark stink of something

rotting below earth.

Fearsome-jawed they'll

devour anything devourable

mayfly nymphs

mosquitoes

tadpoles

their own unready kind.

Now they're writhing

on wet decking

gleaming bangles squirming

back to sun-smudged water

their bull-horned

mandibles pincering air.

Six-legged

hanging tail-high from

the meniscus

breathing through

spiracle trachea

lurking in pondwater murk

then pouncing to inject

their prey

sucking in organs

and fascia

a gazpacho of

tenderised tissue.

Time travellers

they wait and kill

and consume

in a dimension

without beginning or end

answering hunger's

primal ache

its aeons of cold-

blooded inchoate

emotionless rage.

They thrive beyond

our vocabulary

between one thing

and another

indefinite

ineffable

unspeakable

provisional as war.

At summer's end they

burrow into soil

pupate in cold fusion

reincarnate in spring

their anthracite elytra

their domed

submarine hulls

winged to perfection.

Sturons

Planting onion sets

in fresh-raked soil

marking out rows

with a garden cane

balancing on a plank

of wood

surfing turned earth.

Sun basting fields

pouring light into

the same easterly

we’ve had for days

ripping my knuckles

into red skin

shaking hawthorns

grown from some

old hedge line

where detectorists

gather at weekends

pocketing small change

labourers lost

a century ago

lifting hay into

those ruined barns.

I water-in the sets

glistening baby-baubles

cover them with straw

wander to the shed

find a lump hammer

to knock stones back

into a wall where

they slip in gravity’s

zero sum game.

It’s really not funny

the way your mind drifts

when your hands

are occupied

your mind isn’t snow

though it could be on

a day like this with

ice dripping from

the water-barrel tap.

A few days ago

in St Petersburg

Russian state police

threw a man

a musician

a dissenter allegedly

from a high apartment

window onto

the street below.

They say they’re falling

all over Mother Russia

these days

these icicles of death

these ice-black rumours.

I see their open mouths

screaming the same

untranslatable thing

the human soul

in revelation

my hands in soil

my hands held

against stone

my hands planting

onions that resemble

Moscow’s golden domes

and minarets

wondering what could

possibly grow now

in this season of corpses

in God’s long shadow

in this wind below zero

those mouths gasping

obscenely

for simple breath.

Deer Tick

Dark as lodestone

lodged near

the wristband

of my watch by

some witchcraft –

brushing against ferns

above a blue bay

on the Basque

coast – it arrives unfelt

a stealth bomber

attaching its death’s

head to my body heat.

Parasitic

loaded with pathogens

needing a blood

meal at each stage

of its evolution

to move on.

Squat

black-legged

unfathomable

its grin buried

in my skin

burrowing deeper

injecting a bacterial

broth of saliva

when I stroke it

with a fingernail.

Oh my talisman!

My old familiar!

A minor god

celebrant of the

sour luck

it brings –

an itch spreading

a red patch

of irritation

radiating circles

of toxins.

Now tweezers

over the bathroom

sink plucking it

out to squirm

in a tissue

exuding a tantrum

____________

Graham Mort is emeritus Professor of Creative Writing at Lancaster University. Like Fado, a collection of short fiction, appeared from Salt in 2020; a poetry pamphlet, Samara, illustrated by Claire Jefferson, was published by 4Word press in 2021. He is currently working on a new collection of poems, ‘Rivers Joining’.