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Robin Fulton Four poems Whitsun Not points of flame but icy tongues from the north-west sting me by the shore. In crevices seapinks keep their fine balance. I lack both the bravura of gale-defying petals and the mindlessness of rock: I could try between four walls but so many languages I don’t know howl past, prise at gable-ends with such fury I tell myself it’s music. Deep inside it I inhale silence. But the silence starts howling as well, a language with only one word to rage in.
page 61
Fulton The Silent Haiku The first day of frost. I hear too much. Shoes and tyres on gritty asphalt. And the words breathed out sound like a plague of locusts. The louder life gets the more I long for seventeen bits of silence, five, seven and five. Wood Anemones Days lengthen, spaces between trees are wide, long before being filled in. As if to tremble is to live windflower petals tremble, half in half out of last year’s grass tangles. You’d think they’d arrived from far off before place has been made for them. They are small voices, are so small they know they have nothing to say, are wise enough not to say it. 55

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Robin Fulton Four poems

Whitsun

Not points of flame but icy tongues from the north-west sting me by the shore. In crevices seapinks keep their fine balance.

I lack both the bravura of gale-defying petals and the mindlessness of rock: I could try between four walls

but so many languages I don’t know howl past, prise at gable-ends with such fury I tell myself it’s music.

Deep inside it I inhale silence. But the silence starts howling as well, a language with only one word to rage in.

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