Poems

POEMS BY JANET CAMERON PUBLISHED IN ACUMEN, EQUINOX, LOGOS

LIST

I like the sound
when soft winds play pizzicato on wing feathers
of swans in flight.

I like the songs
of sunset when starlings audition
for Aerial Idol.

I like the sight
of sanderlings prospecting in the shallows
like grouchy old men.

I like the fresh smell
of a new day,- the taste of sea spray
on my lips

and of you on my tongue.

(Janet Cameron, from Acumen No. 51, January, 2005)

7 WAYS OF LOOKING AT 15 MINUTES
The author would like to thank
her family - and Mrs. McDowell who actually read her book.

Her agent
who spoke for more than sixty seconds
on the telephone
and signed a card
'With Much Love...'

The author would like to stick a
Long Pin
in the heart of the academic
who remarked, 'Oh well, nowadays
they publish
such rubbish.

And the 'friend' who asked how much it cost her!

Figments and fragments -
the seeds that gave birth to the composite children
of her imagination,
whom she grew to love.

And her muse,
so insistent, she can't wait
to start her fiction.

that lush green field planted
on her side of the fence,
where she is producer, direction and absolute boss
and can be as
Bloody-Minded as she pleases.

(Janet Cameron, from Acumen No. 54, January 2006)

AIR MINES

(A flock of swans flew into power lines in January 2003 on the Isle of Thanet. Most were electrocuted or fell to the ground and died of their wounds)

no one gets a medal for this
except perhaps the red badge of
carnage.

I saw her last Sunday
lazy on a slim stream where warblers make
song in reeds
maybe among the slaughtered who

dropped
and later died from wounds
were three who skimmed
my head as i tramped over marshes
i heard their rich vibrato
i knew them personally.

i make light, trivialise, tell myself
they're merely big white ducks
with crooked necks, and lucky
on account of an arbitary accident of
extreme beauty
not to compete with turkeys at christmas

no importance compared to the war in iraq
less newsworthy than kate winslett's diet

a flock of swan needlessly massacred
for want of a few markers
on power lines
over a kent field
in winter

(Janet Cameron from Logos 9, Spring 2004 & Equinox 9, March 2004. Highly commended in The Lady Longford Poetry Competition 2004)

A SPACE TO GROW

There’s a fist in my head,
so I pick up a plate and smash it,
pause with thick deliberation
and sling another
and a pyrex I’ve had for yonks
and a pudding bowl so the floor is
invisible for fragments.
Strewn with shattered glass, surfaces
shimmer, the hallway
glimmers. China pieces
ricochet round a corner,
wake up the weary carpet in the diner.

Admiring the beautiful mess I feel pampered,
soothed by self-indulgence –
it trickles, syrup sweet
into the core of my sanity.

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