Natalie Crick

 
Spring

The sky’s pale luminescence
Spreads over earth like butter,
Eternal sunshine of a Spring day.

Shoots lisp through soil,
Eager at first and indistinct
As babies teeth.

They’re queened,
Now crowned.

She arrives, babbling with flowers,
Throwing crumbs for birds and bees,
Plunging her wet hands into nude sands.

Buds sleep in velvet cases
That gleam along branches,
The wakened white stars lambent as flame,

The lawn blue as dusk falls.
 

Soul-Seeker

Like a wrought birch in dead earth,
He waits for the missing souls.

The bank of fern stands poised.
Nothing breaks their stillness.

No feral wail from the hills,
Cry of an eagle, crackle of leaves.

Only bones
And scattered rocks.

Ashen remains
Wash out into the world,

Strewn in the storm,
Flanked with driftwood.

The fruit from the trees
Sinks into rot.

He waits.

Not even a worthless soul
Condemned to wander forever.

He picks up a lifeless bird
And holds it close.
 

Natalie Crick has poetry published or forthcoming in journals such as The Chiron Review, Ink in Thirds, Interpreters House, The Penwood Review, and Rust and Moth. She lives in the United Kingdom.