Terry Gifford – Five Poems

Terry Gifford’s poems appeared in The Galway Review in July 2019 and 2020. He is Visiting Research Fellow in Environmental Humanities at Bath Spa University, UK, and Profesor Honorifico at the Universidad de Alicante, Spain. His eighth collection of poetry is A Feast of Fools (2018). Author/editor of seven books on Ted Hughes, he also wrote D. H. Lawrence, Ecofeminism and Nature (2023), Pastoral (2020), Green Voices (2011) and Reconnecting with John Muir (2006). He is the editor of Reading D. H. Lawrence in the Anthropocene (2025). See http://www.terrygifford.co.uk.

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Love Song

 

Its length betrays

its desperation. It is loud

and brash, but melodious. 

It is a sad song,

despite its almost jaunty

full throated, head back,

style of performance – 

a song of unrequited love,

like Bob Marley’s

I don’t want to wait in vain …

 

The singer, from West Africa,

sings with that thousand mile

distance of experience:

Come live with me … 

the loudest request of the reedbed,

an unending solo

for a mate in a Somerset marsh,

but the only Great Reed Warbler

in the wetlands of Great Britain

flying from the furnace.

———–

 

The Singing Bus

 

 

passes the rising tide on its port side

along the rounding shore road,

                whistling the otter’s lament,

 

bowing the strings of yellow kelp,

plucking at pink crayfish,

sounding the base of the turf,

 

its dark storied heat of hearts

and tears at the hearth, 

beating always with flying feet

 

the bounce beating back against rain,

those ever-changing clouds

that do not know how to end

 

their raindance the way school ends,

a lesson ends, a journey ends

in the singing bus until tomorrow’s

 

new sharing session in the old bus

of airs and songs of cart roads,

drove roads, sea roads, songlines.

———–

 

The Sign of the Fish on Colonsay

 

Riding the sea-roads

they sliced through the surf

those Neolithic seafarers,

to land on the long strand

now called Kiloran Bay.

 

From the waves they’d seen

the great cave to call home,

cook fish, gather healing herbs,

stay long enough to leave

their bowls in the living rock.

 

Our brains evolved from the sea,

now need fish oils and mollusc

minerals to grow in the womb.

Agriculture has shrunk our brains,

reduced our renowned intelligence.

 

Viking fishermen from Jura

riding the sea-roads on

the other side of the island

saw yellow moor-grass,

sign of a spring-source in summer.

 

So, a well, chapel, burial ground,

thin soils, a sheltered port, fish

suppers, staying long enough

to carve a Christian phallus –

a monk of fertility for the well.

 

We came from beneath the sea

before the savannah of Africa.

We were a coastal species,

upstanding ospreys,

fish-eating mammals.

 

A bearded monk stares out,

not five feet tall, his hands

are Celtic spirals holding

the mystery of everything, 

bulging out with beginnings.

 

From the back he’s a vestigial

cruciform and his northern tonsure

suggests a pagan penis head.

Beside the well his robes fall

into the sign of the fish.

———–

 

Balnahard Bay, Colonsay                                                      

here, wonder

is a boulder

 

striations

calculations

 

        deep magma arisen

        deep ice compression

 

in the matting of the machair

a single violet sings

 

(for these sights

I took two flights)

 

at the lip of dune

a different tune

 

storm bite

sea sick

 

rising heat

tides beat

 

rising, rising

at my feet

 

(for these sights

I took two flights)

 

to join grandchildren

was the temptation

 

Bristol-Glasgow, Glasgow-Islay

adjust to granddad’s sense of humour

 

                then one blustery island day

                wave him off to Colonsay

 

but his poetic celebrations

now have reverberations

 

for these sights

he took two flights

———–

 

Aurora

 

        ‘White-tailed Eagles Attack Incoming Geese on   Islay’

The Ileach, October 2024

 

A vibrating bootlace quivers across the sky

to the north, before dawn, barely visible.

Then behind it appears a cackling cloud

to land on Loch Gruinard like swirling confetti.

The rising sun glories a small low cloud.

Today, seven thousand and fifty-eight

Barnacle Geese will be counted by Fiona MacGillvray

and, yes, among them are two White-tailed Eagles

sitting like immobile turkeys, already satiated.

 

Wait long enough at Kilnaughton Bay

and the Cosmos will come to you, drop anchor,

outwait the storm en route to the Isle of Man.

Wait long enough in any mucky Islay farmyard

and the Aurora will come to you – the cosmos

as theatre, red to the north, green to the south,

and over us the arching stripes of a magical

tent, shifting colours, in endless movement.

Not the eagle attacks on geese we’d come to see,

but, drama enough, we were already satiated.