“The Wise Child”

By Laura Potts

 

I remember he fled from the fogdrop moors with the dawn

and the bells of December beyond, calling morning to the streets

while winter wept beneath the trees. A sleeping me before the door

glowed on behind my mother’s knees. With holly-forest at his feet

from leaping long the brawling leas, he brought the loss of blossom-blush

to fall upon the breeze: he the keeper of the keys to all our stars and

northern storms, who never knew that news he bore would bruise the husk

of heart and more, poured a prayer into the pram and handed up a telegram.

Pass the years upon the land, a scrap of shying light I am. My splash

of laughter never sang the spring to swing me in its arms, ever since

that winter when my eyes lost all their stars. Oh father in the terrace dark,

that vast cathedral of your heart never called a patch of moon to squint

a light into our room, when looming in the corners slept the soldiers

in the gloom. I saw the sun forever as a wet and sunken wound, and knew

the black that cooked the blue when I was only two. And you? The colder

soul that spat the gas to phantoms that would never pass, who blew

the saplings ribbon-black and burst the buds beneath his tracks, would

always be my father but never once my dad. Last and ever after that, here

where War had torn us sore and mauled our bruises black, I heard

the chant of thousands calling to the stars and back: for all the years

and eras came that postboy down the path. He always was, perhaps,

and is; and leapt until we lost him to the dying mouth of mist.

Laura Potts is twenty-two years old and lives in West Yorkshire, England. Twice-recipient of the Foyle Young Poets Award, her work has appeared in Agenda, Prole and Poetry Salzburg Review. Having worked at The Dylan Thomas Birthplace in Swansea, Laura was last year listed in The Oxford Brookes International Poetry Prize and nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She also became one of The Poetry Business’ New Poets and a BBC New Voice for 2017. Laura’s first BBC radio drama aired at Christmas, and she received a commendation from The Poetry Society in 2018