‘Warning Shots’ and other poems by Geraldine Mitchell

Warning Shots

 
When you live on the edge
of an ocean, you cannot pretend
you did not see it coming.
 
The leaves are still, birds
chatter, the sea is a sheet
of steel. But out west
 
where last night the sun
left a sky illumined
like stained glass
 
dirt heaps up,
someone else’s dustpan
emptied on your doorstep
 
and a magpie
rattling gunfire
at first light.
 
First published in Cyphers and subsequently in Of Birds and Bones

 

Flotilla

‘Heaven Scent’ Magnolia
 
They tack in, full rig, under cover of darkness,
dock before dawn in cement-paved ports
 
at wharves of picket fence. The voyage
has been long through winter’s bald estates,
 
gusting grit and dust have shred their sails
to votive rags, bound now to every leafless branch.
 
Waxen petals blood-tinged white
glow like manna at first light.
 

First…