Sudden Prose Reprints: "Seeing Oaks" by Frances Presley

Seeing Oaks

1

Her love of her mother. Her mother’s gift of language.  We were looking at dead or almost dead trees today, trying to decide where we could plant trees for my mother and what kind.   Mr Carslake offered two yews, but I don’t really fancy yews.  They were always in church yards.  There’s a very practical reason for that ....  to keep the cows away for their own protection.   And it was a very useful wood.   Not that they are really poisonous.  I remember Hanley, was that his name in Ruskington?    Hanwell     Yes, he ate a few berries just to show that they weren’t.  Because there were yews at the bottom of the school garden.....  Or walnut trees, he said we could have walnuts.  I’ve got nothing against walnuts, I suppose they’re native.  But I was thinking more of oaks, or maybe ash.  Don’t you think, oaks?  He examined  the branches of a great tree in a clearing that looked almost dead, snapping off some twigs.    They could clear this away.

2

pine needles

wish bones

these two must be separated

not in the same house

skin flurries

wind or the furies

sleep creases

he said that the two oaks will grow

and if they die

they will be replaced

and I imagine my mother

watching them

my eyes her eyes

these gaps of sunlight

between the shifting oak leaves

and that is true of any oak tree

"Seeing Oaks" comes from Somerset Letters, originally published as a book by Oasis Books in 2002, with selections, including this one, later included in Paravane: New and Selected Poems 1996-2003 (Salt, 2004). Presley's last two books were published by Shearsman; to learn more about her and her work and read selections, please see her Shearsman author page here.  

Sudden Prose Reprints: Somerset Letters 4 by Frances Presley

4

I need a grammar that will link the channel tunnel to the need for an extra groin in the sea wall.  I mean groin, depression between belly and thigh.  The minimum number and size of groynes necessary to economically contain the beach material is reassessed by the design architects who realise they will have to see things in the light of October’s storm, for which they were not prepared.  The park warden is urging the sea to break through the shingle ridge and create new openings and lagoons, which look lovely from above.  You cannot economically contain the beach.

Swallow the sun before it sets.  Short moment.  Yellow grass and mounds of sawdust.  The old life.

I am reading Brenda Chamberlain’s account of her life on Bardsey Island (Ynys Enlii), and the strong dark lines of her drawings.  She says that the nature fancier is the town dweller with a sentimental view of things.  Her sentiments are wild and believed to be archaic, but, like the boat to the island, they cannot always hold water.  Nature leaks through excess diction.  The seal’s nose is nobly aquiline.  She listens for a tongue still vocal in the dust of the island, when we know from a long way off that the dust is still vocal in the tongue.     

Frances Presley

Somerset Letters was originally published as a book by Oasis Books in 2002, with selections, including this one, later included in Paravane: New and Selected Poems 1996-2003 (Salt, 2004). Presley's last two books were published by Shearsman; to learn more about her and her work and read selections, please see her Shearsman author page here.