J.R. POULTER

J. R.

POULTER

Eastern Block Orphan

Bitter, bereaving cold

Shuddering under sheets, waiting…

No wrinkling in the snow, just

Washed out grey,

A shake out of flakes shed

In winter’s bed.

Bare hands claw at the pane,

Scritch, scratch,

And now the rain

To take their grief and wash down river

On a small boat with beckoning ID.

Far down the horizon,

There is a patch of blue…

She fixes her eyes on that

And copes

Until the sky explodes

In a way she never felt the sun before.

This is her hope!

First published in  Colours of Refuge Anthology ed by Shyam Sharma, Authorpress, 2016

The Young Ones

With his white paint he went and

daubed the death mark on

all the young and straight and tall to

be felled for a road through

human existence to

carry the load of

mortality.

Dead Villager, Vietnam

Cloud heavy, oxen hang

Above disturbed reflections

On a drowned paddy field

for - beneath the sky beneath -

floats the image of our time

bearing no reflection

but gazing into silence

after guns.

Babi Yar  

Ice fingers reach out, grip and bind.

The crooked teeth of winter grind

The biting air. The wind whips oaks

Whose roots are red

That feed on Babi Yar’s long dead.

Frozen in time, a torn ravine,

Still photos of a killing scene.

The shot still rings, the victims

Hang mid fall, still seeing

The cliffs of ice engulf their being.

The trees stand sentinel  and keep

A watch on Babi Yar’s long sleep.

The trees’ wide arms a barrier,

The oak leaf’s fingers scatters tears,

This is no place for prying stares…

Deep inside collective mind

The forest grows upon mankind.

It hides the children clinging to

The bones of mothers, fathers, kin

Silent as the night within

At Babi Yar.

[In Dec 2011 issue Quadrant]

Sunset, II,

Palms claw out a strip

Of sky and leave a raw wound

The horizon long.

Field Surgeon Remembering

From his garden, he hears young men prowl in their cars,

Arms captured in a circling crush,

Hears their music blasting,

Down the stethoscope the beat is strong.

They U with screaming rubber.

He begins again, the third time tonight, the needle circling.

The metal cut deep in. The wound is sutured over staying the scar.

He wonders, from his garden, if the tank tracks are

Still there, snailing among the rosy flesh.

He remembers the bodies and how he stitched

Deliberate tank tracks across the skin,

The needle circling, the thread drawing torn flesh together.

He thinks, “there is no perfect rose.”

Thoughts on Water Pollution

We bleed rivers lost

In ocean's cry for strangers

Listening to shells.

Polarisation 

i) View from...

Out your window

what do you see?

Houses

and

trees.

And you,

what do you see?

Men with guns

trained on

me.

ii) Transport

Watching the highway for my bus and,

suddenly, over the rise,

large, lumbrous, a yellow-green truck -

in shock I realise,

Ten thousand miles away,

This is a tank.

J.R.Poulter

J.R.POULTER/MCRAE  Multi-awarded writer /poet with 30+ traditionally published children’s and education books in Australia, UK,  USA and Europe, a former senior educator, librarian, book reviewer, she once worked in a circus. Awards include Children’s Choice, New Zealand, Top Ten Children's & YA Books, NZ, Premier’s Recommended Reading List, Australia, Simone Wood Award, USA. J.R. teaches poetry & prose and heads Word Wings collaborative, 50+ creatives from 20+ countries creating beautiful books.  As J.R.McRae, she is a multi-awarded, internationally published poet, fiction / YA writer and artist. Works include novels Free Passage and Cats’ Eyes, Picturebook/YA crossovers Dream of the Fox Women, Tatter Wings and The Dolls’ House in the Forest. International anthologies containing her poetry, stories and art include – Colours of Refuge, Mytho, Musings, A Mosaic, Best of Vines Leaves, Trust and Treachery, 100 Stories for Queensland, Basics of Life, Quadrant Book of Poetry, 2000-2010, The Spirit of Poe, Poe-It, Guide to Sydney Rivers.