Moon Garden

By Ron Scowcroft.
ISBN 978-0-9928946-1-0
Price £5

OUT OF STOCK

Whether he’s writing about a sheepdog on the Falklands, a constellation or a colony of storks, Ron Scowcroft’s thoughtful and well-honed poems draw you back for futher reading. His practiced ear for just the right word enables him to make ordinary moments uncannily affecting, while also placing them adroitly in their wider context. A poet who never tells you too much but leaves you thinking.

‘Scowcroft has a way with language that causes the ear and mind to take notice at once. He allows for no superfluous word to sit among the finely-hewn lines of each poem.’ Liz Bahs, The Frogmore Papers 

‘These are poems that do not splurge, gush or easily divulge their stories or emotions, but leave enough of a clue to hint at traumas hidden from view; … a pamphlet to return to and reconsider.’ Richie McCaffery, londongrip


Aquarius

Born too early in the year,
roads flooded, sea defences gone
and a white horse in the field
and, of all things, the Zodiac inflatable they came in,
and their torch light
and me blue with cold and the priest in wellingtons
who made it with the chalice and prayer book
and I, who once was gilled like a fish, now gasping, surfacing,
and how beautiful I was
and how, against the odds, I took my name
and how I was told when I was older
of the torn bed sheets
and the ward curtains they wrapped the stillborn in
and how, since then, I swam, or set the sails
or held my breath for long enough
or threw a net or cast a line of stars
and how, by water,
how fortunate I was to come this far.


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