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the poet
Scott Elder’s work has been widely published in the UK, Ireland and elsewhere – his poetry having been placed or commended in numerous competitions in England since 2016. Breaking Away, his debut pamphlet, was published by Poetry Salzburg, while his collection Part of the Dark was published by Dempsey & Windle. A second collection, My Hotel, is due out from Salmon Poetry in 2023.
the poems
Dieppe
A quarter past two and you wondered if
your body were a breeze or a breath of moonlight,
if your children drew on the tide in the harbour
or the dew-covered garden in their dream work.
They lay like feathers in a single bed. And you, at once
the lady in the window and the woman moving
down the cobblestone lane to a pier beyond
the bulwarks and pilings, blending, step upon step,
your own colour and form into that nightscape.
Here and Again
After the song The Here And After
by Jun Miyake
Half-sliced a lily on the table
petals burning white on white
there’s no saying who’s under that skin
salt spray spindrift a taste of rust
a drop of blood just name it
it’s there a knife-slit away
not waiting for someone to whisper
come alive come alive
instinctively twisting back to spawn
to begin again the incantation
the ragged waltz half-here
half-gone you touch your lips
to a lily’s wound this is sorrow
it murmurs the pain is gone
The Man
It’s only a dream but keeps coming back
a highway ticking off concrete slabs
the man steps in three saplings in his fist
four thousand miles from Casablanca
banyan trees a forest in his sack
he hasn’t smiled for a decade
do you know the way to Casablanca I ask
he tries to speak he rounds his lips
then something heavy falls this way
I crumble to earth
snowflakes cover my broken limbs
he tells me to listen to the motor’s hum:
toora loora looral snowflakes cover my eyes
toora loora looral I try to smile
Publishing credits
Dieppe: Coffee-House Poetry – runner-up in the
Here and Again / The Man: The High Window (Issue 12)