APPROPRIATELY, our final sample from Second Wind, a new anthology challenging stock assumptions about ageing, is set in spring. Vicki Feaver is the poet. The book is published by the Saltire Society in association with the Scottish Poetry Library, at £7.
OLD WOMAN IN A FORSYTHIA BUSH
Bright bush of yellow stars
reaching out to me with long
bowed wands, among fields
ringing with blackbird songs;
where lambs, licked into life
by sheep’s rough tongues,
leap like ballet dancers,
impossibly high, as if hung
on strings of a great puppeteer
who dangled me when young,
exciting me to strip of vest
and bra to celebrate spring;
and, now I’m old, whose arms
have dragged me through the long
dark corridors of another winter
to sit on this sunny seat, among
starry stems of forsythia,
buoyant again, as if sprung
from my body and floating
above it, like a seed flung
from the grey head of dandelion.
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