Flash by Alison Brackenbury

 


 

Alison Brackenbury’s Selected Poems, Gallop, was published in 2019 by Carcanet. New poems can be read on her website:

http://alisonbrackenbury.co.uk/

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Flash

 

 

 

 

 

 

In Kenya, to bleached branch it came,

noon’s bird, Malachite kingfisher.

Even the broad beak borrowed flame.

 

At Rousham – was the Cherwell there? –

with friends who, later, trekked through hell,

sun’s amber, fallen skies lit air.

 

Near Oxford, by the stained canal

your latest love turned unkind. You

watched rainstorms fade. Wings burned banks blue.

 

When the drab days unwind you

do not put streams behind you.

Wait for the light to blind you.

 

Alison Brackenbury

 

Published in The Countryman.

 

’75 by Alison Brackenbury

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