Carol Watts
Quicken: Three Poems
1
The year quickens, comes to life
gives back a measure
of that familiar rhythm
as if a nocturnal battle has slugged it out
the green takes on its muscles and peace
a reckoning already settled
by daylight
so this place simply rests
how much older we have become!
see how hours have told, loss drags the corner
of each eye and mouth, conceding
the height of it, a keen scent turning
while trees tower
cool air fills with bodies, earth, cries
skin rises to meet them, receiving
news of living
in intimate scale, endings
2
A broom sweeps a yard, becomes indistinct, merging
with birds, as if the ear wants to equalise
a dryness in sound, make of it straw to bind the day
like the rhythm of a tongue padding away, rough in
anticipation of rain
where small banks of pollen catch in the throat, shunted into
miniature dunes
shoes drag, not quite fitting feet, the hollow scrape
of arches
the morning builds this way in latency
clack-clack!
making way for other bodies to arrive
amplification of bees in a cup
roundness of wings
a consternation
of wrens
3
Quick, as a vein runs through
we have been here before
making clearings to simpler verbs
a child is singing letters
a wren is chattering alarm
weeds are heaping up, lines in a leaf, the patching of shadow
only now arrived
something in the swell of the wind
scatters us
to find estate
overrun
C1300, quickenen, ‘come to life, receive life’, also transitive, ‘give life to’, also ‘return to life from the dead’; see quick (adj.) + -en. The earlier verb was simply quick (c.1200, from late Old English gecwician, and compare Old Norse, kvikna).
Carol Watts’ most recent publications are Kelptown (Shearsman) and A Time of Eels (Oystercatcher). She works at the University of Sussex, UK.