Stardust, Golden, Back to the Garden - Catherine Norris

It’s late summer and I read an article

about a woman’s disdain for August

and agreed, until today, when I soaked

my desirous bones in the melt-hot-sun

with a playlist full of ice-cream-van

tones, and made crowns from metallic

card and sellotape, not for monarchs,

for Gods and Goddesses.

I sat wide-legged on shop floors

and scissored between gravestones

and never felt so alive,

the sweatshirt on a woman walking

down Church Street said, the magic is in you

and you, yours said, jasmine, our love

will be sweet and it was speaking

your language, as you grow through

dog-day dry soil, out-of-nowhere-miracle

star-climbing, white-blooming

sugar-scent-rising

and I know for sure

that I am a gardener, tender-fingered

and needing you to flourish

---

Catherine Norris is a poet and experimental spoken word artist living in Malvern, Worcestershire. Her poetry has been published on the Lucy Writers' Platform, Inter-View magazine and Four Way Review, as well as commended by Andrew McMillan in the Magma Poetry Competition. She has also recorded spoken word for Err Records, France and Miracle Pond Records, UK under the name Plastic Moonrise with a new release due in September with Spirit Duplicator, UK. She is currently a practice-based poetry PhD candidate at the University of Birmingham, England, exploring women in domestic space.