Shoemaker

 

Here are my hands, red scallops, or a pair

of soft leather shoes, in cutaway rose-window style, perhaps.

 

It was the threading that unpicked my sight.

It was the bending that folded up my back – and the lack of light.

 

Sir, I hear your pointed toe in the cobbled yard.

Your shoes are stitched. But I cannot reveal

 

the delicate embroidery, the woven jewels

if you continue to come at night.

 

 

Hunter

 

An arrow found a heron’s breast

soft as a stook of wheat.

A table was waiting and a purse and a belly.

 

Greenbreast, blackbreast, yellow songbird,

those with a long, swift beauty –

all tithed by God to be hung by the feet.

 

And the torn breast dropped feathers

as out of a rich man’s pallet

over the hurdle, where the pigs grunted.

 

 

Beggar

 

We are here for the herring and the loaves.

 

We are thirteen rags & bones, hand

chosen under the vaulting. Thirteen fishy palms

 

under the Abbot’s nose. We get a kiss

& threepence; our gullets unhooked for ale.

 

Daily our bones are as welcome as piss

but it’s Maundy Thursday

 

when God oversees the washing of thirteen pairs

of feet in the east cloister

 

and on the stone bench along the wall,

during Holy Week, we are given love.

 

We are here for the love.

 

 

Whore

 

Lavender, I dream about

for lovers true; fennel, rue.

Pink-frilled gillyflowers;

marigolds wed; daisies

over the marriage bed.

A posy of violets, tended.

Cowslip roots to mend

a bladder’s sting; and roses,

a ring, most joyful

in a nosegay, held close

when I’m led, shaven-headed,

to the whipping-post.

 

 

Lancastrian Bowman, 1461

 

The Battle of Towton was fought in a blizzard. Lancastrian archers, blinded by snow, were unable to see the Yorkist enemy clearly. Yorkist bowmen shot the Lancastrian army’s own arrows back at them, resulting in huge numbers of dead.

 

 

For us, no light.

For them, plain sight.

Loose arrows floored in flight;

York favoured in the fight.

Through the blizzard’s spit and spite

God lays no sun this day of night.

 

 

Heeding* 

 

The labourers are silent in our presence

for we are a terrible crop, and feared.

If we appear mystical in yellow dress,

drag our illness across fields, they to us

blaze blue at their hoes, indigo at day’s end,

for they go forth from the gates nightly,

as we may not, to share an ale or other wisdom.

 

I have had sight of kindness. A smile thrown

or pewter badge unhooked for luck

from a tunic. Our garments may not touch,

but a thought has travelled solicitously,

as the chime of the bell travels from chapel to ear;

mind and chime might heal, having heeded,

sound their clear intent across the field.

 

*Outside labourers were sometimes employed to work the land in a leper’s hospital. Any physical contact between inmate and worker was forbidden.

 

 

Nuns at Fenland Priory

 

We have been gathering light since autumn,

setting oily tapers at squint and stall.

 

Ours is a communal bravery: against winter’s envoy

we are unbending; delicate boned constructs lit

 

in white wool, for if we opened our arms to the dark

he would roughly ride our breast, unfold us on the night

 

stair. Our joinings hold as a cruck frame;

no spirit or flesh may undo our solid work

 

or slip through the door of our faith.

 

 

Farmer’s Advice to his Sheep

 

If sheep be ailing, take a little new ale, and pour it into the mouth of each sheep; and manage to make them swallow it quickish; that will prove of benefit to them

 

Down the hatch, before your bladder’s nabbed

for a jester’s slapstick or your skin’s

stretched and inked; a sick sheep must take ale

if he be ailing and even when hale – from the costrel

a jot, brown as a monk’s gown, is the devil’s antidote

to ewe’s milk. To coddle us

and stave off death, we all take to the bottle,

our days being so many seeds

or grains nibbled, lost, taken by the wind

and spread over three fields; all bound beasts

on God’s ground, addled after the first cup.