Buttercups spread overground as well as under –
runners take long leaps, bite down for purchase, leap again;
white clustered roots form galaxies below.
Fork-loosened soil admits my fingers;
I work them underneath and gently tug, then throw:
over my shoulder a mountain quickly grows,
of tangled green trajectories, tufted white nebulae.
The cleared soil is friable, beetle-riddled, rich –
there will again be beans, pebble-smooth potatoes,
stubborn beetroot, white-spined chard in rows.
The buttercups throw long green ropes,
dig-in winter camps.
In spring, their golden satellites
will signal to the sky.
The moon draws tides across the shifting globe –
seeds burst, seas die:
I’m throwing weeds over my shoulder,
they regroup just out of sight.
© Amanda Bell, first published in The Ofi Press 47, and then in First the Feathers, Doire Press, 2017
Picture 10645092
©The Muriel Dawson Collection / Mary Evans Picture Library
Amanda Bell’s publications include First the Feathers (Doire Press, 2017), which was shortlisted for the Strong Shine Award for best first collection; Undercurrents (Alba, 2016), which won a HSA Kanterman Merit Book Award and was shortlisted for a Touchstone Distinguished Books Award; The Lost Library Book (Onslaught, 2017); and the loneliness of the sasquatch, from the Irish by Gabriel Rosenstock (Alba, 2018). Her poem ‘Points’ was on a shortlist of four for the Irish Poem of the Year 2017. She works as a freelance editor*, and is assistant editor of The Haibun Journal.
* www.clearasabellwritingservices.ie
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