Three Poems by Penelope Shuttle

self-portrait as virgin

the internet 
that wit
our forever friend
tells us
that after a year or two
of celibacy
a woman
will find herself
the possessor
proud or otherwise
of a new hymen
her holy of holies
sealed up anew
dreamy and private

how curious
to enjoy the arcane knowledge
that despite being a mother
I am for a second time
a virgin
which in the old tongue
(they say)
means
to be self-possessed
owned by no one

fasting

came like kindness
but wasn’t kind
came if I called
and when I didn’t
set air above bread
spoke in commandments
liked me in my blood
saw the world with me included
and with me not
counted my bones
one by one
tibia fibula
patella vertebrae
brooking no interruption

Devotions

Grass-frosts in May.
Then, days of rain.
One afternoon the sky clears.
The sun goes down, wilder than lions.
I’ve never had a table in my life.
Loose threads of time.
The sun goes down, like a honeybee.
Reason’s middle name is reason.
Uncanny embroiderers
work with the loose threads of time.
In his old age at Giverny,
white-bearded, nearly blind…
The sun goes down, like a spice-monger.
May.  Blue air.  Optimism of nests.
It is not hidden from my Lord
that one of you his cup hath taken.
Fields of thistle and broom.
The sun goes down into its twilight zone
of red cloud.
Chilly spring evening
desolate as the wireless room on the Titanic.
Ghost-white cattle in the marshy field.
Bees, particularly drawn
to blue and white flowers, also to sage,
catmint, golden rod and hyssop, Jacob’s Ladder,
honeysuckle, white nettle.
The sun rises, like a leopard passant.
We are not the physicians, we are the pain.
Bolting sluices.  Fast dark rivers.
Upstairs, the dying man lying there, a little saint.

Penelope Shuttle lives in Cornwall.  Her thirteenth collection, Lyonesse, appeared from Bloodaxe in June 2021, and was the Observer Poetry Book of the Month for July. Covid/Corvid, a pamphlet written in collaboration with Alyson Hallett, appeared from Broken Sleep Books in September 2021. Father Lear, a pamphlet, was published by Poetry Salzburg in June 2020.