CHRISTIAN WARD

 

The Song Of The Figs

 

The fallen figs on the path

are shrunken cellos. I'm tempted

to split one open and listen

to its music. That might outdo

 

the birds making radios of

the nearby shrubs and bushes;

might wake the rising shoots.

I hold a fig in my palm and think

 

of every note, taking me back

to its Mediterranean coast

with cypress and olive trees 

taking in the music of the sea.

 

I want the music of here,

I say, and fling it away.

 

Snowed In

 

Slumped in the armchair

you watch the blizzard make

snow leopards of the cats

and mammoths of stalled buses,

 

there is still time to examine

what lurks under the skin -

not the formal dance of chromosomes

but further down the biological plumb-line:

 

where people kaleidoscope

into the purest form of elements

and can be thrown like darts

on a periodic table. Sit up straight

 

and watch the trees walk

upright along the freezing roads.

 

Seaweed

 

Patron of the sea,

you turn every piece

of driftwood into song

and, like the conger eels

 

gnawing the pier's welted

legs, turn saltwater

into poetry that froths

when it hits toes and fingers.

 

Patron of the sea,

how you cockle the words

I write, how you make them float.

 

CHRISTIAN WARD

 

CHRISTIAN WARD is a UK-based writer who can be recently found in Red Ogre Review, Wild Court, Scapegoat Review, Pink Apple Press, The Selkie, Rappahannock Review, South Florida Poetry Journal and Double Speak. He won 1st prize in the 2023 Cathalbui Poetry Competition and was longlisted for the 2023 Aurora Prize for Writing.