Angela Arnold Poetry

A Whole New Winterful of Space

A thinner, rollerpinned sky,

wide, swallow-lost

and limitless in its vast

gone and took all the furniture

echoing way: more than room enough

for the pierce and taunt

of red rag to bull robins; the shrill of them,

the tribal tantrums.

This glut of sabre-rattle birds clutch proudly, stick like

glue to the last of the leaf-grip trees, cat-call and snipe and

comprehensively badmouth each other:

be gone, they shout, be gone – as if

autumn were the brave start of something

and we secretly envy them; our How many shopping days...

only a tinny echo of their last before winter excitement

among all the loss.

Soon they look at us newly askance, among the bareness.

We try to keep up, with a mock-sudden faux flutter

of grand ideas: pile of glitter-bearing boxes in lofts.

In truth, now, there's this devastating notion

that there's time and dark time and time ahead,

only some of it bird shaped. Holes in places we used to

inhabit. Maybe we twiddle with gear, sit back,

watch the magnified fly-past

of space itself. Maybe call it astronomy,

just to be calling it something.

first published in Paddler Press, Volume 6

Hare

He chases his airy maybe

vision, shade-flighty goal, across

a field the size of China, driven

by his legs’ taking a fancy,

and his stride just as long

as his heart will reach:

eating the hundreds of hare-made mad

miles at his fastest can-go,

his field compliant.

Clouds attempt his green grain wake,

the swallows envy

his pounding soil touch,

and not a fretful moon in sight –

his leggy ravenings

sparked by those other, inner, spectres.

Impossible to grasp by minds

as far removed from feet

as ours. Outdoor gear no help at all.

first published in Dawntreader, issue 40

The Purpose of Rain

You see the fat of the river punctured, its tight skin

needled. You watch drops, drops

piling on drops, throwing wild water patterns

into yet more water, no sense

at all, this teeming down, this hammering wet

courting an even wetter –

an insult to the sensible eye, this grand waste.

Target missed, surely.

Good rain on parched ground; bad

rain...playing games?

And still dollops sing, and dollops' picture dances, crooks

an enticing finger: this is where the action is,

among all these falling children

plummeting

on to their great riverskin trampoline –

such a bounce to them

(while you feign work too close to your window)

before they sink, slow, calm, dive

home, the thing you've never yet named

for yourself. Properly. And god knows,

the rain tries.

first published in Dream Catcher, issue 44

Not Moving

Borrowed vans, friends'. The moving in (into

what?) no better than piece work, a reluctant drip-drip.

Call it resentment, to be sunk

into a flat present of sea:

an arms-wide sky the only bright thing.

The moving on (on to what?) a grudging heel-drag, years

of feeling old clay coat my fingers, pebbles

slip wetly away, heavy little echoes. Years still hearing

the faint clucking of escapees. More

not mud-surfing round dicey, sharpish corners.

Decades later this huge van, properly organised, paid:

a whole neighbourhood of hands

stuffing it to the gills with boxed pain

and wrapped loss, mattress slotted in like a last

compressed look at the sky –

how else to take it, where else

to park the surprise of near-tears, stow the guilt

of a bigamy of pasts? When exactly did those

trees stake their claim? – And when will the reddening

rocks of some future stop being dust in my mouth,

manage to best the clay, the sand, the dotty

pebbles, that corner, the shrilly swallow-weighted

wires...this slew of roof bodge drips – cement

that my own determined hand

slung there, and patted: for ever.

from In|Between (2023)

Moon Rising

Pale orange egg squinting gawk

through a haze.

Gathers itself:

yolk-round ball labouring

to its celestial feet.

A whole pale yellow facelift.

Now struggles to take the heavenly

chair: a speech maybe?

Rising, it brightens, brightens, tightens,

rims itself more neatly,

boils down to something

cold, white, hard, with a

severely precise diction.

Now it announces

things, of a general nature,

that one would rather

not hear: sky

politician, big

mother.

first published by Frogmore Press in their anthology Pale Fire

Growing Beans

Jemmy open fat skins, push, birth, twine, reach

for depth – before you can even begin

to do the vital potting, toughening, planting.

And they demand: stakes, ties,

water, regular faff, a whole servile flutter

of attention. For a bunch of leaves.

But then to harvest a glade (size of

an Amazon) to go spying in, all innocence,

finger-ramble among the hidden

slowly inching treasures,

promises, promises. But mostly just to get

lost in their lively gift, at one

with sap, set apart for long stretches

of forgetting.

The late blooming-with.

The fearing that breeze will autumn-blow-up

into gale, tear through these living curtains,

pound the still growing heart.

Just one more good green

day – to stand, still, aside from the knife-

slicing, the rapid-boiling, quick-freezing,

the saving, the rattling, all the different

forms of counting.

first published by Green Ink in the Furrows issue

Feel of a Forenoon

Dry edginess of straw, softer crinkle of hay.

Then the puddingy give of goats' flanks

and the warm squash of teats against fingers.

Fingers that squeeze and lift just so,

at a measured, peculiar angle,

with familiar (considerable) force

in only-small muscles.

A quick shift at the endlessly repeated rolling,

smooth, scattery seed feel

or (with some) the barby stickingness,

reluctance to fall,

pinging off-row: rebel seeds

leaving your hand with a kick.

Mid-morning, the slosh and drag of weight

of water, bales, mash, feed,

the good heaviness on feet

driven to skirt mud, mud laced

with white-green goo and odd feathers;

then the slap of forked muck

countered by the weighty warmth

of a chalk shell egg robbed from a perfect bowl

of straw: swirly round and shapely smooth.

Like an artisan's offering.

first published in Envoi, issue 75

Stuck Moment, Quelque Part

Quite as tart now as the feel of it

then; still the same warped shape of a French midnight. –

Lift unexpectedly terminated. There's proper going anywhere

in that direction for you: hallowed by pitch total dark.

Snappily dumped precisely nowhere. Only some

peupliers for shadow witnesses, a gloomy peuple, nowt but

doom in their sighing. And now a road running

too slowly, too pays du nord straight, past black, past

far too many zero a.m. stars: a whole sharp skyful

above this hardly-an-inkling place best called 'Nowhere'.

Now and for ever, likely.

Why do that to an imperfect stranger?

Stopped. Out. Baggage all over

the knifed-open dark. Walk:

a gesture, signposting something like Nightcold Future.

Qu'importe, an inadequate company of trees?

Thoughtless steps drummed out on nameless,

endless, road. What future village welcome? in what

morning? A pretty slim prospect, you're right, of miracle

milk bottles hunkered on newly night-

escaped doorsteps, looking as left there as me, as now, dark

sparkling forever now: stranded.

Did I speak to the trees? What you could have asked me

the next proper day. Not anxiously count les sacs.

first published in The Journal, issue 68

Treedom Finally Declared

Trunks rising to greenheads. Branches crisscrossing this

eagering ivy, much leaf scatter and twigging between, all the

nameless growthy infill, till there's barely light.

A wall of it, noticed a hundred times; tested too – three steps

in and completely impenetrable.

An insult: stopped like that, by vegetation

rampant, and fallen, snapping and making toy gun noises,

rubbing it in, painfully.

And now they tell us they speak.

To each other. Trees. Communicate: adding underground

stealth to obvious obstructionism, sucking word juice

through filaments below the belt

of mulch and crumble.

The tiniest bit

admirable, maybe, the thought of it – but where do I fit

into this picture? Should I be in it even,

after all that's been said, not said, grubbed out

without a care? Will they mind?

Apologise (silently?), with my heart

in it, obviously: deep inside the sappy-root

tangle of it, part now?

Will I manage that?

first published by Green Ink in the Bud and Branch issue

Autumn Move

First, hails of swallows and

then all that black bird-snow of starlings –

and now the neighbours moving

on a whim, careless, leaving dross of years.

Rubbish left in big bag gaggles just outside:

for covens to eye on the wing,

for the too-late winds to palpate,

first sleet to spit bits at.

Any moment, our blitzed trees

will admit us to hollow windows. No one

but robin will pattern the drive: all that white untrodden,

unspoilt, unfun. And slowly we’ll begin

to reinvent the gone – this way and that, depending

on the lie of log, the heated flicker

of some dubious recollection: more than half-

born from the glass.

first published in Pushing Out the Boat, issue 9

Angela Arnold Poetry

NATURE, ordinary things, stuff... and it just CATCHES you LIKE THAT -

TRANSFORMS your MOOD, subtly changes your UNDERSTANDING,

INSPIRES, APPALLS, UPHOLDS, QUESTIONS, SUGGESTS -

at times THE totally PHYSICAL LEADing you OFF, AWAY

INTO THE REALM OF PURE IDEA...