Silver minutes

I drink tea by my seedlings -
contagious desire in tiny pots. 
I notice everything -
the ceanothus blue by my feet,
ceramic heat at my finger tips. 
Don't you know,
silver is one minute with lavender
when you love yourself,
gold the warming of your thighs under the sun?

I remember Hyde park in the heat
as a young woman, lunch on the grass -
He had left me.
I spent my flower time then
not even seeing them; 
the worth in anything -
but growing the question of him;
second by lost second
into my mind's entire sky. 

C. LJ Ireton 2024

The Brontë Falls

To get to know a part of the land
you need to feel the water 
With your skin,
I said
And we put our bare feet, our hands;
blood lines cut from bramble
stinging with the touch,
into the bronze-tinted water of the hills -
a cold incarnation of its ancient self.

We washed off the mud of sunken soil,
with the source's own water,
coin-like and tumbled down from
the white stone heights of the moors.
See? I said
as we felt the ritual of the wanderer,
the sisters -
This is the starting point for stories.


C. LJ Ireton 2024 (To Stacey)

The birds of the Haworth dead

The bluebells have turned invisible at this hour,
sinking into the same blue of shipwrecks.
The dead rest under tables,
silent,
everywhere low is stone 
And plant fingers. 
Lichen is draped almost gracefully 
over the graves -
I saw Charlotte's wedding veil yards away
embroidered white with flowers -
the moonlight
Calls old cobble lines romantic -
But the clock is stuck on midnight,
Stuck.

Every minute they cry,
so you look up,
up -
the sky of the sleepers
is screaming alive, raucous 
With cemetery rooks -
a winged congregation.
I saw Charlotte's mourning lace
Black and falling on its stand,
Delicate sad -
these phantoms fly thick
And fearless,
urgent.

They're discordant, brilliant
In the night -
movement, leaving blurred cloud
Memory wings in their wake
and the moment you dwell on death
their lungs wail a life immediate.

C. LJ Ireton 2024

A somewhere place

We are just two souls,
sitting amongst the young stems and old shrubs
in the sun.
I think of us in Eden -
long-toothed lions talking together then
as you answer me now;
a sound saying you love being outdoors
with me when it's sunny.
But then we don't say anything  -
we are the creatures lying down
side by side,
here and in that somewhere place 
with green and gold light
sky on skin and fur,
even feathers shading reptilian eyes -
Where humans don't take a life,
we listen, lamb-soft,
And live. 

C. LJ Ireton 2024

Pied Wagtail Minute

One pause in the rain
incessant -
I breathe in the after air,
watch two wagtails hoop a bow
over the water.
The moment was theirs to tie
and worth
my tread under
moody, volatile skies,
the wait.

C. LJ Ireton 2024