Knickers
By the river Liffey she
stepped out of satin knickers
sighing like peachy petals
around her ankles, elastic –
growing lax – having let her down.
Second sibling
out of ten, and wise
to the workings of a secret,
she smiled, and
smothering the memory
of a nun’s echoing scold,
stuffed them, her touch
ambiguous as roses,
into a cardigan pocket,
together with a ladybird,
brushed unseen
off her Mary Janes.
Dismissive of the unmaking
inherent in a ladybird hex,
she strode forth
with a flounce
of chestnut hair, flushed cheeks,
on the arm of the young man
who would be my father,
across grudging grass
into a future fragrant, green
as a whispering willow's promises
divined from the morning’s dregs.
That girl's laugh, her shadowy tales,
persist, coast with a hawk
on silent currents, sustenance
for a skylark's silvery beck,
eulogies of a universe
where love is endless song
and no sour notes.
This poem first appeared in Drawn to the Light in 2022. Pratibha Castle, an Irish born poet, lives in West Sussex. Widely published in journals and anthologies including Agenda, International Times, IS&T, One Hand Clapping, Spelt, Tears In The Fence, London Grip, High Window and forthcoming in Stand, she has been longlisted and given special mention in numerous competitions including the Bridport Prize, Indigo Press and Welsh Poetry Competitions. Her debut pamphlet A Triptych of Birds & A Few Loose Feathers (Hedgehog Press 2022) is joined by Miniskirts in The Waste Land (Hedgehog Poetry Press 2023), a young woman’s search for meaning and identity in the Notting Hill and India of the swinging sixties.
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