There are days when I forget I enjoy writing poetry. To be honest, there are weeks, sometimes months, when I become my own administrator and my poetry gets completely
lost. That’s why it was such a joy to spend all of yesterday in the company of other poets, being led through a veritable barrage of multi-sensory prompts by Lisa Matthews and Melanie Ashby, the intrepid creative team behind the ongoing project A Year In Beadnell.
Strandling Feather
Whisht.
I’m not dead.
Shed.
I’m beak-nipped,
a preen-leaving,
winter-to-summer down-shrug,
for the fat pickings
in the glad months make
sleekitty plumage.
One feather
conjures the bird,
plumped on the nest-scrape
eggs sucked pebbles.
I’m plucked,
but still arched
from the puffling shook-out
of incubation.
Divested from the belly,
given to flight, I am
wind-bowled,
sand-skittering,
tumble-fluff,
fast flick of a soft brush,
my own
wing.
Kirsten Luckins 