A Sapphic for Sunday

Strolling on the riverside path, on Sunday,
solo, slowly, kicking a stone in. Slyly
watching families being together, nicely,
since they’re in public

Since in public, nothing is really showing
Scars are covered, stitches are held together,
Dressed with hoodies, bandaged with coloured T-shirts
Sunday’s for healing.


Louise Ordish

The way happiness finds me

On the school field, layered over playtime,

A one-night village of camper vans and nylon.

12-berth citadels and two-man squeezers

Pop-up tents like bubble-gum balloons

A view of shifting greens, a pre-school collage

Of fields and hedges, trees in light and shade

A British summer's evening: we'll have rain.

Bingo, burgers, baps; pre-hoodie kids

Kick balls and swarm and scatter, spread among

Our camping chairs, cold beer and easy talk.

Year sixes bind. Friend to friend, intense,

Afraid of summer's leap to their next school.

Night strolls quietly in. From boxes, children

Break out light sticks, snap alive their glow,

Trade colours and connectors, build their gear:

Bracelets, earrings, necklaces and belts.

Hurdling guy ropes, now they stream away

Towards a distant, thicker darkness where,

Untethered, indiscernible, they hurl

Up high their spinning neon rings,

As though to cast their very spirits free.

To see it stills me; I will keep this safe.

Disco man has sorted out the sounds

His green light's on, he lets the music out

“Tonight's gonna be a good night”, swells the sweet

And knowing promise of the Black Eyed Peas.

I've got that feeling too, it picks me up

And takes me barefoot to the dance-grass where

I shake a shot of pleasure through my limbs

And feel the small emerging child in me

Whoop and loop the loop and hurl my hoops

Of vivid living colour to the sky.

17.7.11
Louise Ordish

King of the Road

23.11.11

See my car

‘phone box, Monopoly hotel, Edam was:

That’s how red. And that scratch,

Is a fighter’s scar, victory’s proof.

Rust?  Well, my car’s no baby,

No beginner, it’s been

Around the block.

See, when I’m in my car

The world shifts and settles

To put me at its centre

Pedalling like fury

By Chance

If, when I was seven,

I had slipped my hand from my mother’s

and let the crowd draw me away

to a life in the circus,

and if, when you were eighteen

you had skidded on your Harley,

torn your shin, been nursed

by a daring bareback rider,

we would never have come together

like this, arms outstretched

knees hooked over the bar

masters of the flying trapeze.

April 2012

Louise Ordish