A blue rooster in Trafalgar Square snorts
out colour through his bill
slicing mist more bravely than any sun.
Jasmine starbursts scattering
a November hedge, a lonely blackbird
singing at dusk, harbingers
more poignant than roses
in summer, swallows doing their thing. And —
St Anne’s arm holding the Virgin Mary on her lap,
a friend who rubs the hollow between
shoulder blades, the scarf that Cary ties
round Ingrid’s bare midriff,
a hand that plucks stray food from a chin,
the brush painting a swathe
of green round that brutal nude.
Janet Murray grew up in Lancashire and currently lives in Sheffield. She won this year’s Fish Publishing poetry prize.
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This article appears in the 07 Nov 2018 issue of the New Statesman, Revenge of the nation state