About…
Details about poem
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Karen Bookguilder is intended to be a collection of poems 60 poems expressly for the Book Guild
by Mike Burr - the themes being dictated by or about its published artisans .
Ale
Abide ye !
the flatlands and fog in winter
he trod down springs green pastured years
drove summers ploughmen on
an autumn landscape - in it witches
covens hidden in the gorse
Ely ale a helped
sun cracked lips, ligated, drawn
and by tooths brown stained stakes
the beer has passed
so inward to distill
the fables and the lore abouts
O ho!
In Holy Dew inside the glass
he saw the elderly a frail
throw up their sticks
and walk as youngsters cross dawns breaking heath
bald eroded grass in tufts upon their heads
now as full and smooth as any turf without wanting for a weed
wrinkles gone a litheness and a song upon their limber limbs
a rhythm in their dancing tread
and he too saw himself as young as they
and at the plough
and helming oxen down the furrow
and of the malt and barley of the field
be consumed oat !
and of the witches and their cauldrons boiling
cosy in their cottages
eat pies !
the Ely bells rolling across the plains
the great planks of open sky before them
their choirs kiss the barley in their passing
but most of all they love
to shriek among the cabbages and men
that growing from the Ely soil
are roving o'er its dusty crust
some of them alive and others not
he trod down the soft felted years
and knew them all and drank with most
or so he claimed