Julie Sampson: For those who say there are no more poems

        i

Look at these swallows

swooping –

the intoxication of loops –

and under

blue

headlong

dives

over butterfly-skims above

the whites of this green gold field

It's easy to miss them –

they sail close to the wind –

to misunderstand the

turn of their phrase,

the twisted spell of their

secret code

and what can you say

of the white under-belly flash

silking those exquisite plaits

of wheat?

        ii

Tell them how it was

for us

not so long ago

in a world where

there were no ... 
mobile phones [phone-home home-phone

Phone

Home]

MP3s

MP4s

Ninetendos

You-tubes

i-tunes

Face-books

Smart phones no

Phone-home

Home-phone

Home ... 

where home was a place

not a meeting-site

in virtual space ... 

Phone ...

        iii

It's calm tonight

we're floating on a sea a wheat-green
gold

alchemy

each stalk waving a soul from

Underworlds where fallow deer

swim a

fox prowls

and you imagine you can see

the baiji dolphin –

even re-imagine

Persephone – 

You wonder what

she is doing

the schedule she set with

her mother and Hadeian

Underground lover

has, after all been going on

for quite a while

(and earth is still going round)

No she's probably having

a hedonistic time – out of it

on ecstasy –

and forgotten long ago

what she came back for

or got bored enticing

those poor souls beneath

She's obviously content

with her lot – lover

keeps her happy, doesn't

need her dose of sun

and sky –

or, she's fed up being

a tool between Mother

and lover not wanting anymore

to do their dirty work

She'll drowse in the home

of her deep earth-bed

heady with day-dream

sleep and idylls of night

on bedded rock

for another 2000 years –

so many poems will enter

her head only

fragments

seep up to ground as

white-wheat seeds –

they'll pick them up with flints

until mother and lover

resolve their differences

        iv

Today I watched the swallows

violet-black their

midday

swoop

over shadow and field

and a white belly uplift

to the perch on phone-lines and on to heaven
through broken

skies – (they're after all
above it all a hieroglyphic

sign from God)

        v

... where Home was not

a place in space

and poet was

a Poet


From Tessatura (2013). Too sprawling a lament, with its emotions untrammeled and thereby losing the force of focus; but nonetheless an anguished statement of true loss that links poet and reader.