Graham Burchell
Little Red Book
They sample mead on rainy evenings,
aging monks who tend hives and walled gardens.
I can see one, his rump filled habit overlapping
a simple bench on a stone floor,
an open Psalter balanced on his lap.
Outside, the cold fog of Dartmoor rolls downhill,
soaks darkness, blurs silhouette vegetation
and stains green lawns with drizzle.
I’m not a monk.
I have but a passing interest in bees.
I hardly know the taste of mead,
and never share spiritual thoughts,
yet I recall the Psalter, a thin red book of psalms
still associated with old skin on a white pinched nose,
stale paper, rancid with the odor of dead priests.
This is what I came from,
Thursday choir practices with the Reverend Treble,
groaning god words, psalms as foreign as French
from a flaky Psalter, praying for my voice to break.
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Graham Burchell (the editor of the online poetry journal Words-Myth.) was born in 1950 in Canterbury, England. In 1976 he
graduated from the University of Sussex and embarked on a teaching
career that would take him to various places around the world
including Zambia, Saudi Arabia, Tenerife, Mexico, France and Chile.
His
first children’s fantasy novel ‘Wumpleberries and
Gronglenuts’ was published in 2003, and the sequel, ‘The
Ice Spells of Krollinad’ was published in 2005. He is the winner
of the 2005 Chapter One Promotions Open Poetry Competition and the
runner up in the 2005 ‘Into Africa’ International Poetry
Competition judged by Roger McGough. He was also given an 'honorable
mention' in the Momaya Press Short Story Competition. His poetry has
appeared or is due to appear in a number of both print and online
literary magazines. He now writes full-time and lives in Houston,
Texas. email: Graham Burcell Website:
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