Two Poems by Kathryn Simmonds

Dandelions

They pitch up overnight, a festival
on every verge, settle
where their own seed blows,

the living
tangled with the dead,

raggy spats of yellow
making merry on their hollow stems

beside the elegantly spent,
heads like tiny
empty pincushions.

Why dandelion?
Why this roaring regal name?

I swish for answers,
find an aberration, lion’s tooth –
dent de lion –
given for the flower’s jagged leaf,

and folk names too, milk witch,
monks head, faceclock,
also piss-a-bed.

Though beloved by bees
and herbalists,
we labour to be rid of them,

tough as worries
they’ll not yield –

for each loose beauty
with a trailing root

a dozen struggles
ending with a snap –
one milky eye
stares back;

our curses fall
like so much rain.

And yet, who couldn’t love their tricks?
The way they’ll force
their heads
through paving cracks,

the way the flowers shrink to pods
preparing to explode

into a wobble globe,
transfigured,
puffed up white with death,

waiting to be scattered by the wind
or grabbed for,
held to light
so clouds race through,
and sun alerts
each seed spore to itself,

blown with a child’s breath,
blown like luck

to ride on air,
more life!
More life!

Moths

Poured in from back gardens
or abandoned dreams, flotsam,
pieces of ourselves returned
in air,
eyelids snipped from the dead
& made to fly,

discarded elbow skins,
fingertips, lips preserved and ironed flat,
nothing to say but

Brightness! Brightness!

Poured in from ages past,
pages of them sprung from reference books,
detailed in sharp 2B,
Fan-foot, Clouded Silver
Willow Beauty,

white or dull, or black
like this Old Lady in her widow’s weeds.

Dainty Goths tiny cloths
for cobweb bobbing

what obsession for this shade-less bulb.
What fuss!

Close the door, they settle, love the wall
so cool, so flushed
with light,
open it &
this emergency! Suddenly too dead

then too alive.

Most make their way back to the dark,
their unexpected fat and feathery bodies crawling
scratchy-legged
on our tiles. Not all escape.

This one floats on toilet water.
Lift it out and look at it, yellowed corner
of a love letter it may yet live.

Kathryn Simmonds' third collection of poems, Scenes from Life on Earth, is forthcoming from Salt. Her poems have appeared in various publications including Poetry, the Guardian, the New Statesman, The Poetry Review and The Irish Times, and, along with her short stories, have been broadcast on BBC radio. She lives in Norwich with her family and tutors for The Poetry School and other organisations.