Cemetery Squirrel photo by Paul Brookes
Red rush
Autumn leaf–red,
panache a swirling lick of flame,
quick as wildfire,
riffling through the trees,
a wild wind,
leap, pirouette,
daredevil dancing,
a squirrel child laughs,
makes a hopscotch game
of going home.
Jane Dougherty
Red Squirrel
A shiver
in the branches of the copper
beech – bare still, spring’s shimmer
not yet budded – and now you leap, skitter
along
the wall and down
the wooden gatepost, then bound,
ears pert, tail long, across the March-damp ground
to clamber
up the viburnum
on which the peanut feeder
hangs: robins, coal tits and finches scatter.
Crouched
upon a branch,
front paws to mouth, round-haunched,
tail fluffed and crimped across your back, you munch
on peanuts
ferociously, as
I, confined, watch through the glass
of the window. Your obsidian eyes meet my gaze.
Marian Christie
‘Red Squirrel’ was first published in Allegro Poetry Magazine #18, September 2018.
Bios and Links
Jane Dougherty
lives and works in southwest France. A Pushcart Prize nominee, her poems and stories have been published in magazines and journals including Ogham Stone, the Ekphrastic Review, Black Bough Poetry, ink sweat and tears, Gleam, Nightingale & Sparrow, Green Ink and Brilliant Flash Fiction. She blogs at https://janedougherty.wordpress.com/ Her poetry chapbooks, thicker than water and birds and other feathers were published in October and November 2020.
Marian Christie
is from Harare, Zimbabwe. She lived in various countries in Africa, Europe and the Middle East before moving to her present home in southeast England.
Marian has published two books of poetry, Fractal Poems and Triangles, with Penteract Press, and a book of essays with Beir Bua Press: From Fibs to Fractals: exploring mathematical forms in poetry. She is currently co-editing an anthology of poetry by Zimbabwean women, to be published by Carnelian Heart in autumn 2023.
Marian blogs at http://www.marianchristiepoetry.net and is on Twitter @marian_v_o.
