The bluebells
All I have to do is write
and there you are,
draped in your paisley scarf,
sitting in your wooden chair.
*
You comb your hair
shimmering like sunlight
and stare in the mirror,
pondering the years.
*
When I walk down
the winding stairs
I feel as if i am entering
the inside of a rose.
*
I understand
how stories can bloom
into a plot, into a field
of delicate forget me nots.
*
Last week
I heard the bluebells
sing in an octave
reserved for angels.
Writing
I use a feather to write a bird
to make paper become the sky.
I conjure the woods
from my notebook.
Blue flowers on the walls.
The scent of pink vodka.
Students stumble down the halls,
dance to Afrobeats in the basement.
Here, Elizabeth wrote Cranford,
stories travel through the floorboards.
Visitors enter, writers, mothers
wives and daughters.
April Grief
I face the large white tree,
shake the hand of a twig,
ask, is this how I should live?
The sun floats away like a red balloon
fluttering out of a child’s grasp, a bee circles
my blouse, settles on my rose skirt.
Picking up a broken branch, I write a poem
in the earth, “I watch the black bird
observe pearls of rain on petals.”
The sky speaks,
hues that can be translated
by every animal.
Blue for the hysteria of spring.
Orange for the heat.
What does the wind want to tell me?
That time is not God
when each flower is a song.
Everything has importance.
clouds solidify into mountains,
I was made like ochre Robins,
The trees lose their leaves,
why would I be
any different?
Untitled
I have seen a woman’s mouth become a wound
tightly stitched into a smile.
An Afternoon with Ruth
Elizabeth sits across the arches
listening to the roses conversation,
drunk on spring, the garden gossip
of violent crocuses.
Ruth leaves the white
pages of Elizabeth’s book to walk barefoot
through the gardens of my mind,
guarded by blue butterflies.
She runs to me with open arms,
tells me in our lives
we must be many women.
Ruth beckons me to untie her corset.
I tell her we share a name,
she nods, says and a story.
her hair smells like peonies.
Each of her words are rooms
I can rest within.
How language opens
becomes a door I can walk through.
Spring at 84 Plymouth Grove
I fold myself
into a blanket
made of cotton
to be warm
for my children
whose smiles
are light
after weeks
of rain, they turn
our home
into yellow roses.
This collection of poems by Princess Princess Arinola Adegbite was produced for Elizabeth Gaskell’s House in collaboration with The Writing Squad and Manchester City of Literature. This project was been funded by National Lottery players, via The National Lottery Heritage Fund. Click Here for more information on the project.
This work is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence (CC-BY 4.0).
