Three Poems by Rebecca Watts

When my sister,

nonchalant as a teenager (though she’s not yet nine), stomps
past the campsite café and jerks out a finger to stab

one of the big smooth buttons on the vender, without looking,
it is I, a bit behind and half skipping to keep up, who am

the primary witness to a miracle whose soundtrack
is the clunk, whirr and thud of its release and drop:
a can of Lilt

bedewed with condensation, new-born on the black felt
bed of the machine. We proclaim it the work of an angel,

and the best thing ever to befall our meagre lives.
Three decades later I’ll be able still to resurrect the feeling –

wonder and awe; the instant, universal banishment of doubt.
And though we won’t be talking, I’ll want to text her straight away

to make it real again, and she’ll reply straight back,
pulling over in a layby on the way home from the school run

just to say: The Lilt! My god, the Lilt. How could I forget?

The Old Mill

What happened there,
down by the old mill,
they never tell.

Something about
a man and a girl
is the most you’ll hear.

What’s clear is that,
wishing the deed undone,
the villagers made the mill pay –

drove a stake through its heart
in the shape of a JCB,
whose wrecking claw

shredded the place
from roof to door. Now
only a part of one wall

and a couple of gear wheels
hang on at the edge of the pool.
Go down and you’ll find it

where the water’s ferrous
with rust, or blood,
depending how you’re minded.

Objects of Faith

It’s easier to believe
in a bin bag snagged on hawthorn –

the contents loose
but not spilled, the thin
plastic bleached and still
dulling in the sun –

than in this heron,
perched
above the river on an overhanging bramble
as though tumbled
from the sky –

hunched
and staring through the veil
like a wildcat
readying to strike –

weightless

and full
of gravitas, having stopped time,
while I jog by, trying to make it stick.

Rebecca Watts is the author of two poetry collections, The Met Office Advises Caution (2016) and Red Gloves (2020), and editor of Elizabeth Jennings: New Selected Poems (2019), all published by Carcanet.