The Journal 66
I don't know - or at least I don't remember - whether anybody else here sends poems to Sam Smith's Journal. It's a good magazine, and quite a long-lived one.
Sam publishes it from a little town in South Wales (Old South Wales), but is very open to the rest of the world - out of 28 poets in this issue I count 5 USA, 1 Germany, 1 India and 1 Czech Republic. (All English poems, but some are translations.)
And one from the Isle of Man. (This one was workshopped here - in 2017. I am miles behind with my submissions.)
Silverdale
The stream keeps its secrets to itself. Peering
into its green shade feels like disturbing
a rural goddess at her toilette. There must,
you would think, be consequences.
Moly may be called for. Here,
in a moment of lostness, my friends
unaccountably far ahead and out of sight,
willow, gorse, sycamore,
hawthorn, speedwell, pignut,
campion, bluebell, cuckoo flower
press themselves to my attention
in ways that seem curious and obscure.
The sky is near. A steep field rises
to an abrupt horizon, over which
anything, really, might come, even
a lord leading his pale lady
with raggle-taggle retinue, perhaps
a sullen fiddler and a few
bored-looking red and white dogs.
But a plane passes over,
like someone undoing a spell,
and movement is restored.
I hurry after my friends, resolving only
to walk away from music,
if there be any.
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