Bath of Herbs
While I mewed new-born in my basket
and my mother lay birth-ruptured
you prepared a bath of herbs
gathered from your garden
under beating summer skies
With mortar and pestle you crushed
yellow chamomile into young mint
pressed buds of newly flowered lavender
sprinkled ocean salt
with cramped fingers you
mixed cloves in oil of orange
made back then for now
You mix, scrape, paste
add plant to water
until bath and steam are essence busting
until tiles gleam and mirrors mist
until all is ready to receive
And so you lead her, daughter of yours
long and naked, hurting, tender
slowly sink her into hot forgetting waters
uncoil her aching body
your love hits her lungs
diffuses into every crevice of her form
she will step out strong again
to greet the world and me
Grandmother, daughter healer
I give thanks
Shade
What is this business of shade
this fixation with hue
this delinquent melanin?
The
mixed ticks and tricks
betwixt
the box marked ‘other’?
To fix this business of shade
The puzzle of origin
You call me
Black in America
Red Skin Gyal in Jamaica
Yellow Child
Creole
Here, Half-Caste
Also, I can be
Your Metis, Mulatto
Martinican Blue-eyed Chabine or
Peau Sauvée
But know this
from the skin that I’m in
the view
is as clear as a tropical night
I see beyond histories of shade
and know that this issue of hue
is a problem concocted by you
He Returned
(Remembering David Oluwale)
Where does the river run to?
my children ask
out of winter sunshine
we stand under dark arches
in echoing shadow
in chills of stone and subterranean waters
in rumbles of overhead trains
above heaving river rush
Where does the river run to?
we hang like the question
peering over railings
absorbed by the thundering Aire
that consumed Oluwale
Oluwale, water-borne to this city
Oluwale, who did not submit
until they pitched him in
Where does the river run to?
Oluwale knows, he journeyed
down inky Northern canals
tunnelled out into the pulsing spread
of Atlantic waters
under an outraged sky
Note: This poem was originally published in Magma 75: The Loss Issue, edited by Adam Lowe and Yvonne Reddick.
Listen to poets reading their work at the Magma website.
Fox
You left me in the Spring
last breath on hospice bed
crisp sheets tight and fanned by morning light
so now I run on winter nights
no focus for my love
red trainers beat on frosty iridescent streets
remembering the rhythms of your heart
behind me homely windows shine
but I’m adrift
inside this pain of mine
My shadow crosses pavements
into a stretch of urban moonlit park
and there
A Fox
who stops to stare
locking blazing eyes with mine
bristling with fiery otherness
wild in the city
and stinking proud
and I am stilled
and I can breathe at last
for it's you that sent him
and then he turns and streaks
across the muddied grass
Tadpoles
I watch you, squirming commas
freeing yourselves from jellied pods
surging towards life, frantic for each other
while we stand alone suspended in Covid cocoons
ever since the music died
Outside, each person in our path becomes a puzzle
how to get past two meters apart?
a strange Spring waltz we dance
on the muddied tracks of the park
trying to breech the space between us
with tight
forced
smiles
But when we emerge from sealed bubbles
squirming with the pleasure of release
we will touch and hug and squeeze again
dizzy with the warmth of bodies
breaking through the space between us
and turning up
the music
loud
Emily Zobel Marshall, April 2020
Illustration by Jeremy Vessey