Sue Davies, a prize winning poet, lives in Catisfield, Fareham. Her first collection of poetry Blue Water Cafe published by Oversteps Books is available by contacting smhdavies@hotmail.co.uk. She has now completed her second collection of poems to be published in 2021.
Flight of the Enchanter
It was there we returned breath to air,
snagged by gorse, pricked with yellow welts.
In the beguiling mouth of the wind, a spangle
of grasshoppers, the button-eyes of birds,
a bronzed brook silking through columns
of lace and white linen flowers braced along
the sea-green flanks. She held my hand
tight which stopped my blood, and I was drugged
by her power, the perfume of pine and grass
just able to lift my feet, knees freshly scabbed,
rickety-thin from city streets. We pounded
a path dead, grey baked clay where nothing grew –
even hissy dandelions stopped short without
a chance to root. But the light cut our eyes
like diamonds – ferns and nettles glowed
white gold, birch leaves darted like fish
where the path narrowed and slothed off
into the murk.
Deeper still, thin saplings
leaned over the fading path, their crowns
puffs of insipid clouds among oaks cracking
their dry roots below the earth. I felt my
dappled skin graft to hers, like the underwing
of the silver-washed fritillary. We took
the hardest path she said, to teach me
the ways of the forest.
Sue Davies
Blue Water Cafe is available to purchase directly from Sue by emailing smhdavies@hotmail.co.uk