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Best Poems Written by Ann Kershaw

Below are the all-time best Ann Kershaw poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

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Kersh

Flickering hazel eyes flecked with cataract silver, glittering this way and that. 
Eyebrows high and a piercing pupil saying
'Move this ing thing, lest I punch my left hooded, binded fist a jab hand on these tubes'.

'Zip wire that gagg, tie and choke my goddamn breath' 
'I will pull them as a hook on a stuck fishing line and retrieve the barb,  bloodspattered, and bubbling.
Frowned lines across forehead asking 'Do it'. 'Do it'. 'Do what I ask '.

So we do. It seems a simple task to give a unanimous verdict. 
The intrusive, plastic, invasive chords are cut,  pulled like black vine from flower beds.

Then you snore an old bear.
The glove is off. You relax into your last sleep. 
The effort to squeeze those exhausted ribs, carried by anaesthetic buzz is cotton buds and breezy, easy.

Between the bright blue curtains someone's shouting 'Kersh come on we've got one waiting for you'.
Others talk of apologises, welcomes,  pats on the back and loving arms. 

A pallor comes and little marks underneath the eyes. You lay asleep. No breath. No pain.

In this dark December night your passing saw rock and roll change into a summer of love, then fall into an Autumn of jazz and horse racing.

We three saying farewell, wondering  if you want  us there or not?
But we know beneath our bludgering feelings of denial. 
The familiar ties that span a lifetime make the fit right. 
And in our jangling, bangling, tightweb, we hold you and wish you a safe journey Kersh

Details | Ann Kershaw Poem

Mary Mary

Mary, Mary how contrary
why does your garden grow?
with old tin cans and frying pans
and muddy boots all in a row.

Car piled high with spider's webs
Their spindly smiles, their lovely legs.
Come and say 'Good mourn ye all'
'We live here now and have a ball'

Inside your hut a homeless man.
You gave some tea and made a plan,
To wash his socks so he could go
And get a job and flat and grass to mow

Golden Wonder, Blenheim Blush
A tattie feast chipped, mashed and mushed.
A field of spuds your Mam would cook,
You now don't need your gardening book.

Pippin, gala, Brae burn and Cox,
Fat round red spheres their crunchy Hocks,
Harvest in a late September
To make the wine for next November

Seasons come as turning bicycles
Protecting flowers from biting icicles.
Feeding plants and changing hedges,
Thick hanging blooms, fruits and veges.

Mary, Mary not contrary,
I know how your garden grows.
With careful plans and gardening hands
and many years in the Know.

Details | Ann Kershaw Poem

Friendship In the Fall

Friendship in the Fall

Maple leaves lime yellow, 
see through claret red
 paved the way and led us to conversations of losing all our teeth
 but still bleating for cake.

 Cake as creamy as the
 lusty browns and chiccy chocolate hues
 that line a wavy iced canal.

 We gum grimace at the thought of losing teeth.
 Reflecting each others 
squinting eyes and mashing gnashers.
 Leaves fall into wreaths 
around our feet beneath the lashings
 of crazy fondant marzipan,
 there is a plan.

 Of two aging women still dynamic in the falling Fall.
 A cake made in the Autumn of our decades warmed with laughter of friendship tears amidst the swirling leaves of future years.

Details | Ann Kershaw Poem

The Sea and Beer

The sea was in a beer swilling mood.

Peroni guggling in frothy blasts.

Swirling, white and foamy, cool gulps hitting the back of my throat found my feet and shins and knees. 

Pulling back sucking my feet into sandpits, playing for fun. 

I savioured the taste and watched pitcher after pitcher roll white-turquoise and crash forward. 



The sky kites out flying hazy in Atlantic spray.



Then a new sea, silky silver grey tongues, mermaids licking their young with contented ease against soft warm sand. 



A gentle calm using light to carve pictures of dancing candles. Like a theatre with many actors, of kings,  storms, fairies, pirates and maidens these oceans pick to play. I watch and   drink the beer served with ice rays of bubbles moving in and out, semi circles of intoxication. 

Today the sea was in a beer swilling mood.

Details | Ann Kershaw Poem

Tree At Coniston Priory

I saw your wet dog face emboldened as a Herald upon your missing limb.

His thick creases deeply lined between his nose, eyes and gaping mouth.

The creviced, cutting, contours ran a moist mist black on your thick fur.

I trace a finger in your dog's mouth and feel it's bark. Put both my palms round heavy jowls and stroke away the morning rain.

From another scapulure fision I see two weeping ocular slits, sad lips upset as an emoji smiley upside down.
Oh something hurt when the saw slid through your trunk this time, something hurt bad. 
The mask of tragedy displayed to lament your missing flange. 

Bodhisattva arms unselfishly bent upwards to pick an unseen flower or a thick bicep bulging to punch the thunder. Without return you heard a suffering cry and gave us breathe. 
Compassion grew you many boughs.

So in return we wield a jagged edge and take your thick brown - black skin and your woody, white flesh. The forelimb no longer points to the morning sun. 

Oh how you grieve !! A bloodless shock with the appendage lying motionless. 'The deeds are, but no doer of the deed is there'

Unhindered you respond to grow your faces of weathered hounds and masks of weeping playwrights. To remind me when I walk these woods 'mere suffering exists, no sufferer is found'.

Details | Ann Kershaw Poem

To Be I Don'T Want To Be

To be (I don’t want to be)

I don’t want to be a Mole living in a hole,
I want to be a Cat sunbathing on a mat

I don’t want to be a slug slithering like a lug,
I want to be an eagle majestic and regale

I don’t want to be a worm blind without colour,
I want to be a Mantis Shrimp that sees colour like no Other.

I don’t want to be single cell Zoo plankton,
I want to be a dolphin with a high IQ and live in Rockhampton.

I don’t want to be a tetchy Lantern shark,
I want to be a Momma Blue Whale wagging her tail.

If I had choices these things I’d pick,
They would be the boxes I’d tick.

But failing all that:
no cat and no mat,
no regale eagle,
no Mantis Shrimp painting,
no body inflating.

I’d pick me
Every pea,
With my soul and my mole and my wonky knee.

From my perspective, although it’s subjective

I feel and I think and I see
And there’s only one of me!

Details | Ann Kershaw Poem

Torn From Me

May mornings turned a blue iris white with the sight of petaled plates on your stubble.

By surprise they appeared as a dawn shadow, thick on a black jaw,
Smelling of Millionaires against your stout chin.

I blinked and sent you into my record fayer then when I needed a shot, my blood could be filled with your sweet liqueur.

Spring white blossoms faded and you grew an October Ginger beard, I trimmed it and groomed it to take out with me to dinner parties and stand close to in smoky rooms.

And I pictured you full blossom and evergreen, through ice bite dark days and winds from Tibor Mountain. Cruel Calder Valley beasts zipping  vengeful and bitter.

And as Delilah took her shears to take the strength of an Immortal so they came and took you, beard and girth. With much frivolity they laughed and took it.

I see you with your sparse hair, tarred and feathered like a plucked Goose you are. 
They tore you from me.

Details | Ann Kershaw Poem

Sunrise In the Wolds

When the sun rises and spreads
 its sticky yellow syrup across green marzipan fields 
I rub the bees from the fragrant holyhock bells 
and sniff the nectar. 

I pull each cup to drink the breakfast dew 
and taste summer mornings paste 
then hear a fly buzzing by. 

Trees are heavy with laden aprons of
sappy boughs, thick with unopened fruit,
Unable to set the table or move their loaded limbs. 


In this warm, breathless, first blush, 
slurping down the booty of the day,
inebriated in a fine stirred brew of Yorkshire hemp, 
I blink to see my dreaming fairyland alive,
and paying tribute lift to toast the ride.