The Road to Eniskerry ~ Emma Rich

The Road to Eniskerry, by Peter Collis

There are torches, torches

burning bushes and a cross

No Moses or a Jesus

in the long-tall shadows

of this Irish evening

I’m just walking home to Eniskerry

and the feather in my cap is black

~ Emma Rich ~

Green and Blue Music ~ Emma Rich

© Sophia Roberts

The wind is soughing and moaning. She is chasing a forest highway; she has to outrun this storm; she knows boughs will be broken.

Moving fast, her body lifts off. She is flying so hard and fast she will go through the edge of the sky. A wall of water dissolves.

She is thrashing about above sea trees. There are dolphins and flying fish cradled in the branches, violently rocking. Someone is crooning “It don’t mean a thing …”

And a shaft of light - some sort of god’s golden finger - is beating time. It is directing a troupe of stiff armed starfish in a dance on the bed of the ocean.

But the tempo is all wrong. They can only very slowly flip and shimmy, imperceptibly swaying to the beat of the tide, on the updraft of this morning.

For it is today. She opens an eye.

In the flat the piano is softly playing a lullaby. She calls out, “Hugh, darling, is that you?”

In the silence there are dry leaves rubbing at her bedroom window.

~ Emma Rich ~

At the scene of the crime ~ Emma Rich

Outlined in chalk

a chalk artist draws a yellow border round my body

reduces it to a specimen, pinned to the pavement.

I stand up, move to one side, peer down. 

It does not represent me.

He has traced the echo of a cut-out

articulated the ghost of a shadow

a negative space

an outline of who I am.

It needs embellishment:

a veined mapwork

of highways, pathways, clearings,

tracks of dreams, songlines;

there should be named rivers overrunning borders,

origami boats floating downstream,

bearing hopeful poems.

And words

streaming from my heels

as I walk away.

~ Emma Rich ~
published in The Broadsheet

Walking is rare and extraordinary ~ Emma Rich

© Sophia Roberts

after in Praise of Walking by Thomas A. Clark

Walking is an expedition.

I wear sensible shoes. I travel light. 

My purse-bearer is polite and courteous, with old-fashioned manners.

He guides my left arm – the stiff one – into the sleeve of my coat.

He opens the door.  Like the Baptist he goes ahead, prepares my way.

I resist all temptation.  I do not open the post. 

But I do pause, look out at the view.  

It is a Claude Lorraine painting.

I would like to wander in this landscape. 

How lovely it would be to meander through Arcadia,

to stop awhile, chat with shepherds

and climb up into the mountains.

The project in hand is this walk.   

I must decline all alternatives.

I pick up my sticks. 

My palms are perfectly adjusted

to the paddle handles, through long use.

I am down the steps. 

There are primroses; a solitary daffodil has speared the earth. 

They do not take me out of my way. 

I do not digress.

(I dare not discover along the way,

though it would be an excellent thing).

I never take a wrong turning. I never double back.

Oh, the luxury of being lost.

My neighbours are out. The road is quiet.

No witnesses. This is private with the potential for humiliation.

Only he, who drives Miss Sophia, knows about my daily war

of attrition - the fight for independence.

Walking is not

ordinary, unexceptional, just what I do. 

It’s a kind of statement: that I am an expert at walking,

slowly

over the shortest possible distance

~ Emma Rich ~

published in Fit for Work

Playing Dead ~ Emma Rich

An empty stool

When Carolyn remarks - not sotto voce

at all,  “Jo-Joe should never have left,”

I think she can’t mean it – not like that.

We all know it’s half past ten

(and that her babysitter will want

time and a half if she’s late again).

We’re all waiting for this rehearsal

to end, for the credits to roll.

We all know the stand-in has taken

way too long learning his lines.

Ask me, I knew it wouldn’t work:

singing in the rain, wearing glasses,

with an anonymous face.  Too nice,

too boy-next door to fall down

on his knees on a damp pavement

with panache.  So not what‘s needed,

so not what Warrington needed.

They should have told him, “No,”

shouted “Next”.  They should have

fired, not hired him.  I mean how

hard is it to sit there on a bar stool,

without moving, gesturing, saying

nothing, at the very end of the Show,

like Jo-Jo did every goddam night .

Until he didn’t move. 

At all.  Just waiting

to be carried off.

Come the end.

I reply, “In harness, darling.

What he would have wanted.”

~ Emma Rich ~

On a Clear Day in Spring ~ Emma Rich

© Sophia Roberts

this expanse of moorland edged with gorse, riven

by a river ornamented with banks of yellow flowers;

by a runway lit by blazing torches in broad daylight;

by a grey silk ribbon, edged with tufts of gold leaf...

on a clear day in spring

from the brow of this hill,

a lonely road journeys onward

into a lucid blue sky

~ Emma Rich ~

Factory Ship ~ Emma Rich

© Sophia Roberts

Ghostly silhouettes

stand, wait at first light,

for a smouldering apparition

for a wraith on the tide,

for a chimney to rise;

for a breath of smoke

to smudge at,

to erase, to displace

the remains of this night

~ Emma Rich ~

Her Eyes Adored Him ~ Emma Rich

The Swing

He recited Éluard’s verse 
and she was air-borne;

allowing herself to be swung 

tilted, and balanced, mid-air. 

My pretty little sister 

adorned with limp blue butterflies 

who simpered, blushed 

shimmered, and swayed 

flitted over the edge, 

and into the risk of his love.

~ Emma Rich ~