Issue 36: Geoff Sawers

Heron Heart

I’ve grown up at last into a child

with a harp in a dark back-bedroom

a dusty unsafe space mouldering into black

where 5/4 rhythms drive the night

the light away into crystal spires

I’ll sing you what you want and when you want it

I’ll spin it out of the air and the eastern fire

I’ll plait a place to lay your broken limbs

in the roar of the surf, before your mother’s birth

eludes us – pulls the universe apart

and the seas are mountains in a ring

at crossroads – crescent stations – shelled ports

champagne and lights and whispers on the terrace

the collapse of the constellations

I’ll charm you a place to hide from the lights on the shore.

The heron is not the frog’s god

nor is the fox – nor the tomahawk

but the harp and the heart and the sleep of quietness

The Separations

the horses chew and stamp

                        down corridors lined with portraits

turning stiff circles before the judge

                        on soft steamy straw in the palace stables

sharp teeth in the fur of your throat

                        as the blossom falls

her little saint-like face

                        escaping through a window as the cops arrive

a pair of gloves left behind

                        picnicking in the ancient camp

an old car stripped of parts

                        flowers in the walled garden

why don’t we say the things that matter?  

                        fishing from the burnt-out chassis

a Count in exile at Tenby

                        bald at twenty-four

striped silk awnings in the sunshine

                        peach and lemon and bronze

nerves broken on a rack

                        heavy iron across the sunset

we cannot be your servants

                        obedient or otherwise

in flat fields burnt yellow-white

                        the breeze snaps out the sail

the officer stamps our papers

                        arrows deflected off the haze

the room, the bed, like a shell

                        the priest refuses our prayers

the grand lady drops a ruby ring

                        we live in shreds of code

corrupted, for the child

                        to find in the dew, in the dawn

shadows drop from lilac to purple

                        some slowing of the tides

we wake to a pale weak sunlight

                        beneath a crust of ice

as deer pace the city streets

                        the huntsmen are muzzled

fingers numb and shaking

                        they miss their shots

the grand lady calls for a glass

                        of honey-brown Sauternes

but the currents fail

                        frost crusting now on the rim

Caesar’s ghost as a glacier

                        rots on the Roman shore

a wolf laps at the amber wine

                        and the Black Sea freezes over

with the wind in the steely reeds

                        fluting a minor third

Geoff Sawers’ most recent book is Widdershins Walk (with Peter Driver, Peculiarity Press, 2025) and he has edited and written the introduction for The Complete Short Stories of Dorothy Edwards (Blackthorn Press, 2025). Paintings on Instagram: geoff.sawers 

Copyright © 2026 by Geoff Sawers, all rights reserved. This text may be used and shared in accordance with the fair-use provisions of Copyright law. Archiving, redistribution, or republication of this text on other terms, in any medium, requires the notification of the journal and consent of the author.