This poem first appeared in the Fib Review in March 2021.

Scylla and Charybdis is a lipogram, using only the letters contained in the title. It was originally published in the anthology Myth & Metamorphosis (Penteract Press). 

Your grandmother’s, this set
of six. I imagine her, fine-boned and elegant,
serving turtle soup in these bowls. Delicate
as eggshells, they nestle in their saucers
while golden turtles drift
around their sides, motionless 
against a hidden tide.
 
Remember how we dived with turtles
in sun-sparkled waters of the Gulf;
how you admired their leisured grace,
the slow speed of their flippers
as they flew the sea like air. 
Remember how one night we watched 
hatchlings splutter from their nests, 
tumble down moon-
white sand to bounce
like pennies into hungry surf –
 
hatchlings as tiny as these bowls
that I will never use 
for turtle soup.

This poem was originally published in The Beach Hut. 

When they stripped the ivy from the oak, he could see
the scar – the trunk’s flesh peeled away
to expose deep tissue, fibre pale as bone
where a limb was ripped by lightning
forty years ago.

Perhaps the oak had welcomed concealment,
the stranglehold of ivy, green
through all the seasons, all the years.
Watching from his bed the play of light
and shade, he pondered

how memories abide in trees – he recalled
thorns like bone needles, neatly paired,
glinting through the silver green of leaves;
the fissured texture of the bark;
seedpods, pendulous

as crescent moons; and how fiercely that day
he had focussed on the acacia, its details,
so that he did not have to look
at what was on the ground, nor at the vultures
above, in holding patterns.

‘Old Wounds’ was originally published in 192 Poetry Magazine.

The format of this poem is derived from Pascal’s Triangle

This poem first appeared in the Bridges 2020 Poetry Anthology (ed. Sarah Glaz), Tessellations Publishing, Phoenix, Arizona. There is a recording of Marian reading this and other poems on the Bridges 2020 Virtual Poetry Reading website.

This poem first appeared in the Bridges 2020 Poetry Anthology (ed. Sarah Glaz), Tessellations Publishing, Phoenix, Arizona.

There is a recording of Marian reading this and other poems on the Bridges 2020 Virtual Poetry Reading website

Let us assign the cube to earth. (Plato)
In this Muladhara Lotus is the square region of Prthivi. (Purnananda)

This poem first appeared in the Bridges 2020 Poetry Anthology (ed. Sarah Glaz), Tessellations Publishing, Phoenix, Arizona.

There is a recording of Marian reading this and other poems on the Bridges 2020 Virtual Poetry Reading website

The dance of light on fissured bark.
A conker’s polished sheen.

Angled petals of red and gold. Fine stems
that tether whirling butterflies.

An oak leaf’s quiet surrender
to the gentle spikes of grass.
 
My grandson’s fingers
curled around mine
 
as we skip from east to west
and back to east again.

Greenwich

September 2020

This poem is pinned to Greenwich Park on the Places of Poetry website:

‘Crochet’ first appeared in Issue 36 of The Fib Review, Summer 2020.

For my father

Half of you is listening. Half of you sees the mountain, hard lines pushing against the sky. Half of you senses air’s faint breath, feels warmth like fingers where sunlight has sneaked beneath your hat. Your left hand acknowledges my touch.

I only half listened that day last year, as we walked through the fynbos on the slopes above Camps Bay. You spoke in the voice you used for children or for childhood, for stories of Piglet and of Pooh and how you were at school with Christopher Robin.  

When the time comes, I want a Daddy to hold me by the hand.

I smiled, said nothing. We were a long way from The Hundred Acres Wood. 

Spiked crests of birds of paradise ignite above their leaves. Half of you is present. Is the other half hidden, like the mountain when the south-east wind spreads a tablecloth of cloud? Or has your Daddy taken your right hand gently in His own, to lead the missing half of you past Lion’s Head into the light?

I don’t ask this, but I think this in the shadow of the mountain. Half of you listens to my silence. All of you cannot speak.  

‘Cape of Good Hope’ first appeared in The Amethyst Review on 14^th April 2020.