I'd forgotten how the curled bark blushes pink sometimes,
out of dampness I suppose, or a new angle of light.

A kind of blossoming, like spring come early to these woods.
It is the salmon-petalled poppy I dug from my husband's

grandmother's garden after her death. Dirt rained
through my hands, exposing the severed root. I thought

I'd killed it. But all these years it keeps coming back:
mouthful of sunrise, crinkled crepe tongues. The flush

of my daughter's cheeks as she sits in the bath weeping,
steam rising off the pale buds of her breasts,

her hands cupped like leaves beneath her nose to catch
the bleeding. Rosettes blooming in the milky water

all around her. It is the sudden tree of her
standing beside me as I guide her from the tub,

the white towel I dry her legs with and drape
over her back to brush her hair. She lets me brush her hair.

It is the stained tissue I peel from her wet face because
she lets me. Pressing a fresh one there, I think of the blood

that's yet to come, her other flowering, wondering
if she'll need me then. It is the color of her needing me.
from the book BELL I WAKE TO / Zone 3 
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Photograph of Barry MacSweeney in an urban street
"Poem of the Week: Daft Patter"

Carol Rumens unravels a late poem by poet Barry MacSweeney to separate memory from nostalgia. "As the poem gains energy, it tells us that intense experience may take shape in the mind again and again: it’s never lost. Memory, for ever young and volatile, stamps its immediacy on to the hesitation and disintegration time and suffering bring." 

via THE GUARDIAN
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What Sparks Poetry:
John Cotter on Bill Knott’s
"(Sergey) (Yesenin) Speaking (Isadora) (Duncan)"

"I realized eventually the intensity of my hero worship was too unwieldy, though only about six or seven months after my friends did. I also knew I’d never find my own voice if I kept imitating Bill’s. I pushed off toward other mentors—no one I interacted with personally, just voices in books—but it was never the same. Poetry was too lonely without Bill in my head." 
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