Four Poems by Helen Tookey

PN Review 149, January - February 2003

Autumn Child

for Patrick
Autumn child
you would be born with the leaf-fall
the catch in the air
that tells the year's turn

tonight, a rag of cloud
blindfolding the face of the moon

am I leaving you
or moving to greet you?

August

I am inside August, waiting
under a dome of blue glass that traps the stilled air
hanging heat and scent of tar.

It was December, the far side of the year,
when I calculated months;
in the dark of winter I saw myself
under the blue glass of August
the year stalled and heavy
and I heavy with the summer
waiting.

November

You and I are in the low winter sun
the last golden light flaming the leaves and high windows
our shadows reaching away to the future

but here I am alone inside a cell of rain
under a blurred sky
casting no shadow

The Sign

A day of crashing clouds,
wind clattering in the yards;
like being at sea.

Something is beginning,
unseen, but recognized.
The kiwi fruit,
three weeks ripening innocuously
in the fruit bowl,
tasted like soap

and afterwards like black metal
catching in my throat.

---

Helen Tookey was born near Leicester in 1969 and now lives in Liverpool. She studied philosophy at university and subsequently worked in publishing. She currently teaches creative writing at Liverpool John Moores University. She has published two previous poetry collections with Carcanet Press, Missel-Child (2014, shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry First Collection Prize, 2015) and City of Departures (2019, shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection, 2019). Her latest collection, In the Quaker Hotel, was published in 2022.

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