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Best Poems Written by Diane Leggett

Below are the all-time best Diane Leggett poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

Details | Diane Leggett Poem

The desolate perfection of solitude. The shiver of recognition that there is only one being on the mountain, and that’s you. The pine trees watch, the boulders brood, but there is no one there. The splendour of being alone, crushed to fragments by the chirping of crickets, pierced by the song of a mountain thrush. The sea of solitude, a sea of sounds. With no noise at night, sounds rush you like a wave, a pounding surf inside your head. But, then, in the ozone tonic morning, the sky fills you with blue happiness, emotions so high you are born again on the mountain, and loneliness seems the greatest joy a man could wish for. Praise be to God I’m alone. Though the mountain air throws its voice from time to time. “There’s a whole world out there waiting for you — what are you waiting for? The world doesn’t care whether you're here or not.” I know, I think. I am free, so free I could dissolve into thin air right now and fly through that hill, through the planet for that matter. Find myself on Mars and know what loneliness is all about. Earthly loneliness is for cowards. On earth there’s an outside chance a human will turn up. On Mars, loneliness meets a new friend — desperation. The desperate need to remain whole, to not break up and boil in the Martian atmosphere. To not depressurise and explode. Lots of long walks required on Mars I’d say. Circumnavigation would do it. Is there loneliness greater than that? I think there is, but I’m afraid to tell you. But there is a tremendous rhythm to be found in silence. It might take days to get it. You might suffer with sound death in an echo chamber for a while. Tinnitus might strafe your skull case for what seem like endless nights. But one day you’ll find yourself listening to a distant, low base rhythm that starts from the balls of your feet, the back of your skull — you don’t know which — but it’s so strong, so virile and strident you see the whole forest take up arms and shake its fists. And you shake your fists too, and dance like a bear in a dry riverbed — wolfsbane shooting off your claws like bullet tracers, spraying colours all over the pine tree valley. The music in silence. It’s dripping from the trees, drifting in mountain mist.

Details | Diane Leggett Poem

A More Beautiful Shell

Some way from the Firth of Forth
A shoal of glittering mackerel
Swirls and sways 
Swells with the sea from silver to black 
Flashes white and back to silver and grey

A humpback whale
Juddering its leathery jaws together
With a throatful of panicked fish
For a moment it bobs in place
Then sinks down slowly again 
To await its next prey

But some fish get away
Dash, dash, dash
Gannets with wingtips a-black
In fizzing copper-green dive bomb 
Pinning their wings back
Weaving, spiral bubbles rising
They spear the blank-eyed fish
And paddle away

In the tidal pools by the beach 
Where the tiny sea herds crawl
Hermit crabs pick at morsels 
Washed up by the tide
Snipping with their pincers 
To nibble mackerel tails
They ward off competitors with their giant claws

Crabby-crawl tiny sea herds
Squabble in the pools of the micro-sea
But steal when you can the more beautiful shell
Of a crab that is greater than thee.

Details | Diane Leggett Poem

The Wanderer Falls

Shadow souls flying across the sea
Of my senses they knew, what a mockery,
How do I write the song says the dream?
Whereupon the wanderer falls

In the scribbled pines 
Of a forest burnt 
In the addled minds 
of ruminants
Under the spell 
Of prescription drugs
A waterfall falling long
Whispering into nothing
And how does a shadow sing along?
With the words planted 
When their minds are gone

The cultured lie pearl
Calumny and drought
Don’t ask me
I don’t know what it means
I just write it down
Medicated monsters flee themselves 
In fiery wagons chasing hope
When no earthly vehicle 
Can help them now

And the darkness of the drones
The forest-flatteners blocking the sun
With gun-carriage storms 
Of all fissile material
Spitting their fish scales 
Into our faces

And who wrote the song?
Down by the deadpond
Now that Weyland’s work is done
Tantalite, tungsten, sin, tin and gold
Seem pretty small in your hand there’s a phone
But all over Africa mines are still smouldering
How do I write the song says the dream?
Lord help me I feel the world psyche waking
Whereupon the wanderer falls.

Details | Diane Leggett Poem

Barn Owl On a Blood Moon

At harvest time
Where a white ghost flies
Across a blood red moon
Behind the fields the rolling hills
Are purple, pink and blue

Over a dreaming wheat field
A barn owl patrols
Noiselessly it glides
Over the golden yellow drifts

Suddenly, it flaps its wings
And stares down intently
Below on the soil a startled vole
Sees a white star fall
A squeak and the owl is gone 
And with it the limp vole.

Details | Diane Leggett Poem

The British Seashore

On the cliff at the Worm’s Head 
High above the horns of the bay
I see the surfers ride great waves
With horses’ manes
That ever fail, but never end
In the strong Atlantic surge

In the estuary at Dartmouth
Where the oyster boats dredge
Turning and drifting in slow shadow dance 
Great nets of shells are hauled up 
And poured out on to the decks
As I plunge upriver

Tacking along the wending Dart
With bent-puzzle oaks on either side
I hear a sudden hush descend
Upon a lonely river hythe
As time and air, smooth and still
Forever glide, like Mayflies
On cold, clear water

In the seaway by the port
With its unmistakable algal aroma
Of the British seashore
I hear the heavy horn of a freighter
That plies its path
And never sinks, yet ever diminishes
Beyond the waves

And far from the pier of the seaside town
Where sandpipers probe 
In spiral casts
I hear the penthal call of the curlew
Like silver flourishes on a black cloud
That never moves, but holds dominion
In the cold morning air.

Details | Diane Leggett Poem

The Tempest

Do you feel the great turning, the maelstrom coming around, spitting sparks of searing birds that circle each other screaming in a language like pain? Blisters burning feathers, beaks and eyes till they ignite like flares spiralling in the tempest of this world. High performance vehicles lose their wings in ever-turning pressure, four by fours and pickups, thousand cc superbikes all spinning round and round. Their windows, bumpers, lights and panels flail off into airy channels, ricochet off stop lights scutter down the highway till they form an evil spout. Sucking up the houses, gardens, fences, trees and chickens, dogs and cats and mice and rats and farmyard animals. Spinning them so hard they break up turning and exploding like cartons spraying all across the town. Gaining pace the maelstrom grows, widens, sucks up earth and loess, strips the soil and grinds it up and spits it out. Spreads over the terrain, living feeding off the pain, sucking the last seeds from the fields. Finds the streams and all the rivers, cuts them out like veal and liver, eats them up like a cannibal. The sound is like a roar of terror, amalgam of all vicious weather, battering, beating, bruising every soul. And yet we won’t stop the oil fields, pipelines, stripping whole horizons just for dirty shale.

Details | Diane Leggett Poem

The Burning Vehicle

A slow and painful crash
Where one sees one's face
Approach the dashboard in infinite detail
Where one has time 
To check one's fear in the mirror
But instead takes a suck on a vape
And puts one's foot down
And, speeding through abandoned suburbs,
Is caught in a storm of fire.
Carry me from the burning vehicle?
No, better to wait inside
And watch thoughts fly from window to window
Like glowing ashes
Until the mind is quiet
And the roof withers with embers
Lilac in their demise
For only in silence
Can the sphere of the stars unfold
And the old clepsydra drip dry, again.

Details | Diane Leggett Poem

The Sea Cave's Lee

All words and wonder, wobbling copper green
Foam and guano floating 
In the sea cave’s lee
A flock of gannets raucous on a rocky pile
And the ever-growing echo as the men came by
Climbed from the boat 
And dragged it from the water
Bare feet on painful pebbles relieved by sand
And, at the back of the cave, they dug on their knees 
Scooping with their hands
A tiny purple phial was found, ancient and Phoenician
The granite stopper plucked 
And, instead of a salty seaweed smell,
An oozing, resinous scent
From the darkness of consciousness
A rose and orange essence
Though not exactly a smell
Rather a panorama of far-off painted and planted secret messages
Kiss-kept by a woman
The tinkle of her bangles upon her wrists and ankles still
Echoed in the cave as if the lady was there
Her glancing eye gripped one cold
The press of her heel as she posed before dance
The burst of laughter with friends
Admiring her pencilled eyebrows and plum-blushed lips
Hips and elbows endearingly tipped
She leant forward and whispered into the traveller’s ear, 
All words and wonder:
“Find me some ambergris and bring it to Arabia
Find me some ambergris to perfume my breasts
Find me some ambergris and bring it to my tent.”

Best Poems Written by Diane Leggett

Overmood

The Paw-Trod Path

Alone on the Mountain

A More Beautiful Shell

The Wanderer Falls

Barn Owl On a Blood Moon

The British Seashore

The Tempest

The Burning Vehicle

The Sea Cave's Lee