2 Poems
Susie Campbell
Susie Campbell’s work has appeared in many UK and international journals, visual poetry anthologies and exhibitions. Recent book publications include Tenter (Guillemot Press, 2020) and Enclosures (Osmosis Press, 2021) with a new title The Sleeping Place forthcoming from Guillemot Press in 2023. She is working on a poetry practice-based PhD at Oxford Brookes.
She can be found at https://susiecampbellwrites.wordpress.com or on social media https://www.instagram.com/susiecampbellwrites/ and https://twitter.com/susiecampbell
A Chantar M’er
Field of Bears
We agree to meet in a field of bears but how to reach across this linguistic constellation. Perhaps inside this pronoun, a collaboration past a muddy vehicle left at the edge of a field to rust. And we have our names. Proper names as a fluffy visitor’s badge pinned to our pastel dungarees for the duration.
And it doesn’t have to be bears, we say, if we choose to meet without them. A field without bears is easy, right here, past the rust and through that gate or a gap in the hedge, or no gate and no hedge because it is an open field, but there must be grass and perhaps a tree. A fallen tree split in half by lightening, a dead weight in this half-light. But it is the full weight of the sun, and not a dead tree but six trees which make an orchard.
Those wasps though, after the cider-apples.
We can meet here in this field if we bring a snake, but not if it’s an orchard. It can be awkward for a woman and a snake in an orchard and as well as a trope we’ll need a conjunction.
And so we sit in the shade and watch it snow last year when our minds were still green and we talked about poetry then too. We meet here in a snow-covered orchard, no wasps as the fruit is still ripening.
But when will the growling stop if we decide not to bring in the bears? And their growling doesn’t even matter because they are wearing fur over their dungarees and a visitors’ badge. But there must be grass and perhaps a tree, and at least we have agreed to talk about an orchard in the snow although our pastel dungarees are a dead weight in this half-light. That was not on the map. And when will the growling stop if we are meeting in a field without bears for the duration of our meeting.
And why are we wearing fur?
So we sit in the snow and watch, as bears in pastel fur meet in a field for the duration of us.
