Lintel

by Gillian Allnutt

This text gives the reader poems of the threshold; poems that stand at the edge, looking back as well as forward; poems that arise out of known, imagined and imaginary places, such as the landscape of 'Tabitha and Lintel'.

Genres: Poetry

64 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2002

Reviews

[Sienna · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fierce, meditative, deceptively quiet. Some resonated with me; others, not so much. So three and a half stars. My highlights:

Inishkeel

Think of the unexpected helpfulness of water —

how it might strand you

on the small shore, here, as if this island were
the earth, its own frail sphere
of prayer

and obsolescence. There'd be tides and tides of
glittering small shells, broken here, like truths,
one after the other.

You'd be brevity, yourself barefoot.

You'd turn to salt as if you'd understood
the murmur of

the sea as missal. Yes, you might remember

gold or frankincense or myrrh —

you'd settle for the exhaled light of stars.

Anchorage

In Julian's alone unlettered hand
love takes the hard ground

dust of oak-
gall and the quill, the history of the soul. It breaks

an April into tiny unprotected revelations
of its own. It makes bone

flower like blackthorn.

Her Father Walks Over Eggleston Moor

I will take her the sunlight caught in my coat, its smell of wool.
I will take her the boat-on-wheels —
I daresay Martha will be good enough to mend the smaller sail.
I will take her the sound of the sea that has crossed the hills
Without its shell.

The Road Home

It is the road to God
that matters now, the ragged road, the wood.

And if you will, drop pebbles here and there
like Hansel, Gretel, right where

they'll shine
in the wilful light of the moon.

You won't be going back to the hut
where father, mother plot

the cul de sac of the world
in a field

that's permanently full
of people

looking for a festival
of literature, a fairy tale,

a feathered
nest of brothers, sisters. Would

that first world, bared now to the word
God, wade

with you, through wood, into the weald and weather
of the stars?

(Those final lines!)