Geraldine Green’s poem Oklahoma night
Oklahoma night
Sitting here, watching a daddy longlegs
spin against the window
from a thin thread of spider twine,
I rise, go outside, slip into a white hammock
strung between two posts of hickory
in a small backyard, Oklahoma City.
You come out, say, “awhh, you look so pretty lying there!
You just enjoy the song of that old mockingbird”.
And I take your advice,
doze along on the strung-out hammock
white as a new moth cocoon and mockingbird,
he sings from the top of his telegraph post,
sings his madfool heart right out his breast
tips his tail, bobs his head
looks around, east and west.
No sign of a mate.
So he changes his tune.
He sings like a robin
sings like a siren
sings like an appletree in spring.
Sang that night when the air-con broke
and we lay looking out our open window
at the bared bones of prairie,
mosquito nets covering our flesh
and that tomfool bird mocking us
in the cocooned dark of Oklahoma night.
Previously published in ‘The Other Side of the Bridge’ Indigo Dreams 2012
available from:http://www.indigodreamsbookshop.com/#/geraldine-green/4565286878
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Dr. Geraldine Green is a writer, freelance creative writing tutor and mentor and a visiting lecturer at The University of Cumbria.
She has had four collections published. The Skin and Passio Flarestack Pubications, Poems of a Mole Catcher’s Daughter under the pseudonym of Katie A Coyle by Palores Publications. The Other Side of the Bridge by Indigo Dreams formed part of her PhD in Creative Writing: “An Exploration of Identity and Environment through Poetry.” Geraldine was a contributor to a book on therapeutic writing – Writing Works. Her next collection Salt Road will be published summer 2013, also by Indigo Dreams.
Geraldine’s poetry has been widely anthologised in the UK, US and Italy and translated into German and Romanian. She has recently given a talk at the Lawrence Durrell Centenary Celebrations in Corfu and presented a Paper on the works of John Clare and Aldo Leopold at The South West Texas Conference, Albuquerque. Geraldine, who frequently performs her poetry in the US, will shortly be reading at WoodyFest, www.woodyguthrie.com/ on an extended poetry trip to Oklahoma and Kansas. You can listen to her reading on www.kpfa.org/archive/id/81889
She is an Associate Editor of Poetry Bay www.poetrybay.com
Abegail Morley 