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Sarah O
Here you will (eventually) find some of my published words. Scroll down.
Christmas stowed in your Cha-Dansu
Waxed, elm slides apart,
reveals fir cones
gilded for the saffron joy
of bagatelles.
Sugi is cedar in Japanese.
Toasted kukicha leaches
from the woods,
flavours the twist
of five spice
too stale to mull.
Spruce tapers roll loose
in the box,
a fillette of champagne
sooted with your print
from the last fire you laid.
Lametta flows like kintsugi
through the gaps.
Sarah O’Grady
Published Broken Spine
Longshore Drift
Yawl creaks tonight,
fret lifts but the tide
is so low.
Crew, cobled to shore,
drink in the snug.
Keel wedges on the kansh,
rocks cargo
in its salty hold.
Scullers check creel
beyond the skerry.
I scrat wrack
for lava-bread,
shack dark.
Driftwood lies spitful,
unsparked.
Crab skaned for bait,
I watch crates
idle in spume,
sure the tide will turn
in my direction soon.
Sarah O’ Grady
Published Butcher’s Dog
Daughter @ St Pancras 2021
Oh how I want to find you
waiting by the Kissing Statue
Your hair captured
in my mouth
as I rest my chin
on your shoulder
inhaling good Italian coffee.
The heaving trains would sigh
as we embraced
Covetous pigeons patrol
numbed to the ironwork
so hungry for a crumb
but still uncertain of their welcome.
Oh how I want to find you
waiting again by the Kissing Statue
To inhale your breath
I would forsake
all the Italian coffee.
Sarah O’ Grady
Published Dreich Collections (Response)
In the gallery black
brushing West with East,
washi sighs, the cherry pressed,
ink-deep egrets wade,
goldfish flash then fade, misty,
the shishi-odoshi splash.
Sarah O’Grady
Published Hedgehog Press
Poaching
Our chapel squats
on moorland mire,
grouse encroaching.
Only the dry-stone wall
keeps coverts at bay.
Confession at dusk, she claimed.
The frayed tweed
of mother’s winter coat,
dun in the game season,
was a constellation of stars
through my steepled palms.
I knelt behind her,
breathed incense,
Arpège, alarm.
Fox- fur pulsed
fleet at her throat.
She was too long in the stall.
My knees penanced numb,
I waited for her to turn, come
away from another
kind of thief.
His sanctuary lamp burned.
I heard her laugh
from my pew,
listening in the apse,
my beads rattling
like her pearls.
Bats echolocate their prey.
Beyond the porch, torches
swung beneath the yews.
Unfurled shadows crept,
black-game snared
on the lek.
Hares bolted across the heath.
Sarah O’ Grady
Published Green Ink
Orca J2 Vancouver
I am older than their city
in the last boat out
before the storm
Slicking pacific waters
always schooling youth
if he would listen.
Humans plunge waves
through treacherous drift
life suits soaked
litmus for brine
The wind takes
their people breath
quelling prayers
meshed in gusts
of nauseous spit
I see all their judgements
are querulous with fear.
Turning a flare
of demulcent tail
I call them home
across fissures of time
Beyond the breach
of species
I leap for them twice
then shark West
dragging wonder
into open sea.
Sarah O’Grady
Published Dreich Animals Collection
Remnants
The day is released.
City bridges murmurate
with city suits
swooping from Bank
to the bridge,
transpontine.
Evening gilds the river,
seams solitary lives
inside-out,
selvedge frays with the rub.
Humans filament loose
at Waterloo.
I recall you now at stations,
your poems tailored,
sketched out on the edge
of fashion,
our flimsy pattern snagged
on a split nib.
You kept a coat then
from your past,
folded on the spare cafe chair.
I waiting for my last train,
you always expecting
someone else.
Sarah O’ Grady
Published The Madrigal
Weather Warning
Storm Corrie lifts the keep-net
from our bacchanalian days,
releases all the saggy cans
to dance like cow bells
swung from jowls
tripping down the scree.
Our pastures still
patchy green,
we are half asleep
hearing the end of the world,
dreaming that jetsam
hurled at cars
is surely cattle
clattering in to milk.
Sarah O’ Grady
Published Green Ink Tempest
Disoriented
It isn’t even dusk,
car wends down holloways,
signal fades
in the gully of Winter.
We cut the engine,
shake out our map
of old ways,
trace the wrong turn
with fingers re-learning
how to follow.
Light hide and seeks
to a distant Wold,
windows lower.
An owl shows us
how silence really works.
Sarah O’Grady
Published Dreich Love collection
Stranded Seal
Sea foam
candy floss high
whipped into the penny arcade,
sand- caked spines
shivered and twisted
in the roughness of towels
before tumble driers
made us soft.
The boy,
storm blown skittish,
ran nut brown on the shale
gulling his way from suck
to pebble pull,
the relics
of our sunny afternoon
were all his world.
Then we saw
grace pole-axed
by warm flanks
heaving last breath,
but we could not hear his sobs
for the offshore wind.
Sarah O’ Grady
Published Dreich Zoo Collection
Stell
Rowan hears history
bleating on the rise.
Aeons of sheep,
crunching root,
stripping broch bones bare,
a crescendo of domestic revelation.
Her finger joints crook
in the absent folds
of linted cloaks,
branches lent away
from prevailing winds.
Knarled to a field-stone wall
she observes...
selions ridged under sedge,
common-land marking time,
as if the buried debris
of calcified cauldrons,
now dub with rinsed rust,
will boil again,
given some air.
Sarah O’ Grady
Published Green Ink Enclosure
stell: A partial inclosure made by a wall or trees, to serve as a shelter for sheep or cattle.
Mercury Rising
I rucksacked ashes
on trains.
My father, his mother,
the first man’s grandmother,
my second man, my friend.
I attract solutions,
orbit melancholy,
a heavy magnet
in the Etch-A-Sketch
of grief.
I release them
onto water, earth under roses,
air to dark, stars.
Plot the ley lines of spirits,
a secret map of adieus:
that tarn, black with reflection,
ringing with curlews.
The named bench,
loose lead tethered
to the leg.
Everywhere
so public
I have broken the rules of decency.
Today I watch a man
scissor the sky on platform ten.
He leaps for joy,
cuts the first sun of spring
from shadow.
My entire day is held
in one gentle pocket.
Sarah O’ Grady
Published Poetry Breakfast
Her courage is leaden skyed
There is a certain sort of grey
that promises rain, soon.
Flint dark from the quarry
grey, sobbing implacable,
the grey that banks sharply
into sudden squall.
When I dash from my shelter
to gather her,
grey is already knapped,
slamming steel doors shut.
There is a certain sort of grey
that promises sun, later.
Pigeon-feather from the breast grey,
pitter-patter heart grey
that steals quietly
out of youth.
Sarah O'Grady
Published Dreich 100D
Cached in larch to nestle
spying on shelducks
marshes slunched in dusk.
​
Published Spelt Advent Calendar