Three Poems by Claire Booker

Gaia in the Back Garden

.
I find her crouched, knees by her ears,
plump as a newt, jockeying
the little patch of earth, flinging soil
with her sky-blue trowel.

They’re not doing anything, she cries,
her hand speckled with sprouting
radishes frail as mandrake children –
flopped pods with their filaments ripped.

A week is a month in her world.
When I try to explain how life grows
slowly and magically, like the new baby
on his way, she tugs us both down.

Seed packets clack on sticks behind us.
We lie, soil-warmed and innocent
on the earth’s teeming belly.
Shhh, she whispers, and we listen.

Heartsease

.
You were master of observation,
knew every native plant,

taught me
how best they thrive.

As we inspected a clump
of heartsease on the edge of a garden

a woman came out,
accused us of trespassing.

I walked away. You stayed to listen –
closely, patiently, like a friend.

It’s loneliness, you said
that’s made her angry.

I looked back and saw you had left her
a little of yourself to hold.

Love Song to a Prism

.
Your body is my accidental joy, my playground,
a never-ending surprise.

This whiteness was such a bruise. I was weeping
colour but didn’t know it.

How I longed in my vacuum to arrive,
trapped in straight lines of infinite departure,

blocked by laws set hard inside.
Your glances found me.

The precision of your depths split me truly.
You harvest each radiant bead,

clothe me in my own complexities.
I bend. We merge.

Our children turn cartwheels in tones of heaven.
Their feet are light, without shadow.

Claire Booker lives on the South Downs near Brighton and was longlisted in the 2023 National Poetry Competition. Her nature-themed collection A Pocketful of Chalk [/] is out with Arachne Press. She blogs at www.bookerplays.co.uk