Poetry
A Golden Shovel, from Shakespeare’s Henry VI Part 2
Written Upon the Green Party Winning Four Seats
by Julian Bishop
A musk rose budding, rosette for
a buttonhole, a worn lawn being
revived to a truer state of green
in a July of heavy rain here, there,
everywhere across land which is
desiccated by a drought so great
every raindrop chimes with hope.
Note: After losing his faculties, Henry VI was deposed by Edward IV, whose reign marked the end of the Hundred Years War.
Published in Culture Matters, Summer 2024
Green Tea
A zingy October day, over-hot
green tea
and the oak still in full leaf outside the window.
A few leaves spider around
the fragile glass
tiny roots swirling through the substrata.
Sunlight razors through,
floods the cup
with brilliance, fires the spinning particles
until it looks like a chalice
of dying stars,
like I’m holding a glassful of the planet in my hands.
Published in Dust Poetry Magazine, October 2023
Five Degrees
Take one – another atoll gone, droughts, faster rate
of ice melt. Sweltering taxis. A few mortuaries fail
to cope in The Pyrenees. Chin up, it’s not too late.
Two degrees – forget the Med. Instead, investigate
Aberystwyth for a tan. Gozo is a no-go. You can sail
across London in a skiff! Now the planet’s heart-rate
skips a beat. Three degrees is when the floodgates
open. Holland (and the coral) gone. A large-scale
exodus from Africa. Geo-engineers arrive too late.
Work hard for a degree at Oxford-by-the-Sea, wait
for a Balliol boat. Bail out – Cambridge is a folktale.
At four, methane leaks from the sea floor, the rate
accelerates. Mangrove swamps, sapodillas recreate
the tropics in Paris. Bananas on a boulevard; so shale
had an upside after all! Take the fifth – way too late
to keep the lid on oceanic gas explosions so great
Hiroshima is but a flicker. Then the final coffin nail:
supercharged fireballs banging into cities at a rate
of knots. The lid lowers by degrees. Sorry: too late.
Published in Magma Schools Issue, 2023
Warning: Dangerous Tree
says the sign tacked to a barbed wire fence
as if the singular anger of a pollarded old oak
could be contained months after it passed on
as if the wrath of a mass plantation shackled
by stanchions and slipped into plastic tubes
could be excused, as if the rage of the lonely
front garden acer could be easily explained,
as if you could justify the lopped off limbs
of an ash desperate to bridge a tarmac span
or the indignity of topiary inflicted upon yew,
cropped into outsize lollipops and peacocks,
as if being labelled scrub or urban furniture
weren’t enough or the slavery of being unable
to escape the chainsaw, the pain of being
stubbed and dehorned, your crown hat-racked
and topped, pruned wounds sun-scalded,
and invaded, plagued by pests and disease,
As if a tree didn’t already hold enough rain
Winner of the Urban Tree Festival Poetry Competition 2023
Global Warming
(A Lipogram)
An ill mallow in a loggia, a marginal
growl, a growing nag. Algal alarm,
a wan bog, a blown worm on a lawn,
a lamb born in a binbag. A ragbag lion
agonal, a low moan, a growing nag.
A liana growing in limbo, a worn
rainbow, abnormal rain. An albino
gorilla aglow, an animal aria, largo.
A long low moan, a wrong aroma,
a brawling oilman in moralling garb.
Malign lingo. Wonga mania, grim loam.
A glib million gambling on oil, a raging
mob now blaming granola or a long ago
Big Bang. Raw war: no win, no air.
Published in 14 Magazine, November 2022