Three Poems by Rebecca Goss

The Pact

Hay, recently harvested, turned to those sweet-smelling
blocks, barn-stacked, almost to the roof, forbidden.
Only the dog watched our clamber, taking us
to where the swallows come, and up there
we leapt and trod the dry bundles, our elevated play.
Then one of us was gone. Slipped unnoticed into a gap
our parents warned us of, how this strawy structure
could snatch a boy, or girl, and the plummet would be
too great, too narrow to save them. We needed to hear him
before we lay our chests at the edge of the hole, my arm
voted longest to stab into the deep, a reaching into myth,
until I felt his plump hand and heaved, watched his flop
into the light. Circled, trembling, we tried to still our
breathing, made the necessary promise, headed back
to the house and kitchen, mother cooking, the fall a secret
held far into our adult lives. Forever haunted by its morphing:
the drop deeper, our mother unable to remember
what made her look out of the window. Maybe she felt us
coming, or maybe our approaching shadows interfered
with the light. Standing at the glass, the smell of leek
and potato soup suddenly strong yet she ignored its simmer
to watch her children, running. Middle boy screaming.
She couldn’t hear it but could tell by the stretch of his mouth.
Middle girl behind him, struggling to keep up, glasses loose
on her face. Eldest leading the terrible flee, white pumps
spitting gravel. The barn looming in black behind them,
unable to see her youngest boy, her youngest boy not with them,
her youngest boy not pulled from that warm well.

My Father Gave a Cockerel to Jack Bruce

In return he invited us for supper. His house
buried in a lost Suffolk lane, garden rambling,

rooms warm with worn textiles, the comfort of things.
His young children playing in that familiar

wild way my siblings and I knew about. Jack cooked.
Pea soup. Its tureen brought to the table

where he poured sparkling wine into its centre,
set it frothing, mouths agog at our bowls.

My seventeen-year-old self, indifferent
to rock star status, couldn’t fathom why

there was so little talk of the French A Level
I was expected to sit in the morning.

I didn’t care about cockerels either. Possessive
of fifty hens, could be a nasty fucker, flying

at my sister when she carried in the feed.
Dad and Jack, spoons forgotten, finding

their conversational riff.
My mum, charming, leaning her beautiful

freckled arms across the table,
the whole night calling him Bruce Jack.

Nest

The cygnets draw a crowd
before they are born.
Mother swan’s occasional
rise to nudge her ovate crop,
beak slow and practised
at the turning. Father swan
circling, rearing at dogs.

We return to see one, peeping,
puff of grey from under her
and the next week come back
to find a family gone. One,
unhatched, remaining.
Its marble lonely in the bowl.
Your hand slips out of mine

as you bolt to waiting slide, swings,
leaving me with the egg, and all mothers
who lay their babies down, knowing
they cannot stay beside them,
must lower their own bodies into water
and continue with the swim.

Rebecca Goss is a poet, tutor and mentor living in Suffolk. She is the author of three collections and two pamphlets. Her second collection, Her Birth (Carcanet 2013), was shortlisted for the 2013 Forward Prize for Best Collection, the 2015 Warwick Prize for Writing and the 2015 Portico Prize for Literature. https://twitter.com/gosspoems