Roy Marshall’s spring

Wessex Wood

A perfect diversion, to leave the lane and step
under this canopy, to follow the stream
and find bluebells, scroll-headed ferns,
yellow primrose at the mossy roots of trees;
then a sudden stench, and here, a Fox,
some days dead, coat slackened, eye sockets
picked clean; death has come to steal a breath
from the mouth of spring.

Egg

I tread carefully over tarmac and grass,
cup treasure in my palms, leave
playtime behind;
she stands in the doorway, hand on hip,
my approach long since noted
in her regular sweep.
‘The baby bird will die,’ she says,
‘its mother will leave because of your scent.’
I tip it, warm and blue, into the nest,
walk to the classroom, my face hot and wet,
the world off kilter

Roy Marshall lives in Leicestershire where he works in adult education. His poems have appeared in many publications in the UK and Ireland and been featured in ‘Poems in The Waiting Room,’ New Zealand.
Roy blogs at https://roymarshall.wordpress.com/about/

Roy Marshall: Featured Poet

.

The Catch

They came in summer, whole shoals flashing across
the dish of the moon, bound inland, breaking from waves
to skip shale and harbour walls, some snagged

on fences where they telegraphed the onrush of death
to uneasy farm dogs, others leaping hedges to rain
bullet-nosed onto bonnets,

gelid eyes smearing cracked windscreens
where drivers shook in dented wrecks,
lap deep in heads and tails,

while others hit the suburbs, poured through cat flaps,
dropped down vents to drown sleepers in basement flats,
splashed into reservoirs,

guided by miles of pipes
to fly up between the legs of those making night visits
in sleeping Midland towns. We knew it would come to this;
we knew it as we laid our nets.

First published in The Rialto 75
.

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Roy Marshall was born in 1966. He had a variety of jobs before training
to be a nurse and working for several years in Coronary Care and research.
Roy began sending poems to magazines in 2009, the year one of his poems
was awarded second place in the Ledbury Poetry competition. His pamphlet
‘Gopagilla’ is published by Crystal Clear pamphlets and a full collection is due
from Shoestring Press in autumn 2013. Roy blogs here.