My life as an onion
dry skins for compost
layers of meaning
rings of time
faster than a tree
cut me and you’ll cry
learn layer by layer
love is at the heart of things
even as the compost feeds the future
a life without tears
Silian Road, Ceredigion
Horse in mud where two lanes meet,
five kites play overhead;
line of trees to a platform, and I see
milk churns for market, ghosts
back from the front, a route
to my door from
before the car. Nostalgia
draped in an anorak,
mud of then on my boots
in a wet field far from home.
Minsmere in March
and they ask me
where have you come from,
where are you going?
I am going to the marsh all week
to dig drains, mend fences
do what I have to do
to keep avocets happy,
make a home fit for spoonbills,
but they mean
are you a student
what was it like, your breakdown,
what did your father say?
Marsh harrier does not care;
bittern has not been seen yet,
maybe after I am back
on dry land, with a career path
my parents can impress on
their friends.
I dig drains, mend fences,
bury fear of failure
in the Suffolk mud.
(Aziz wrote Minsmere in March in a poetry workshop with Ann and Peter Sansom)
Aziz Dixon’s poetry collection Because of the War is published by Maytree Press and is available here.
Find out more about Aziz on our Contributors’ Page.
(Photo: Marco Verch Professional Photographer/flickr.com/ CC BY 2.0)
- Three Poems by Aziz Dixon - March 18, 2021