Two Poems by Chris Emery

Cow Parsley

That you can’t easily move through while wet May dies,
vulgar and disconsolate and heavy scented:
ghost fringe of unadopted lanes,
nova of hedgerows.

And here you are again so common and abundant
enjoying the florid shade. You fill it briefly
which tells us all of being young, if you can remember
the flurry, the hustle,

all that sweet showiness we go through while May dies
and another season crams its heat
into the centre of you, grown so tall,
then suddenly it is over.

The Frost Wife

She will come on a horned moon night
with her fire sleigh singing,
with her dress of thorns and coal black eyes
she’ll come ringing.

Killing foxes, working stoats across the hearsay snows,
knocking all your black horse cares
across fields where she scares
dead burrows.

You may see her on the river-stones carrying a knife
she’ll peep into your eyes
to squeeze some kisses or goodbyes,
the frost wife.

Chris Emery is a poet and director of Salt. He has published three collections of poetry, two chapbooks, a writer’s guide, an anthology of art and poems, and has edited selections of Emily Brontë, John Keats and Christina Rossetti. A new poetry collection, Modern Fog, is forthcoming. He lives in Cromer, North Norfolk.