Jenny Hockey’s poems have appeared in The North, Magma, The Frogmore Papers, Orbis and Dreamcatcher and in a poetry card for Poems in the Waiting Room (NZ). New Writing North awarded her a New Poets Bursary in 2013 and Oversteps Books published her debut collection, ‘Going to bed with the moon’ in 2019 (jennyhockeypoetry.co.uk., familyhistoryandwar.com)
Summoning Birds
We sent a crying of owls
into the woods behind our house,
the day we carried our speaker
out into dusk’s long warmth,
turned up the sound
and silhouettes came swooping back,
settled on the chimney, tricked
into proximity. Had we strayed
through a rent in the veil,
like spirit mediums
talking to the dead — like me
next day, talking to a pigeon
that flew in through the back door,
along the hall to the window seat?
It hunkered down, aching to soar
among limes and oaks in the park.
I found my voice, my hands
cradling its feathery bulk,
the pulse of it here in my grasp,
crouched among my quiet words
until I let it fly —
kept the feather left on my step.
© Jenny Hockey
The summer you didn’t go to France
Remember you’re spared
dread as the ferry docks,
an indigestible meal
waiting behind the terrace carte.
There’s only the river
to grieve for, only an echoing square
at dawn, orchards and allotments,
someone astir with a fork
and the empty road unwinding,
only a vest on your back,
barely a change of clothes
in two half empty bags —
so now you’re as good as there,
the towpath, the poplars, the Loire
already more than enough,
there with a limestone church
and an old dog ambling by,
there with nothing more
than other people’s days
ticking their quiet path.
© Jenny Hockey
Family Break
A ceiling that slants right down
to a cottage window. No view
unless we drop to our knees.
It’s early July. The day hardly sleeps
or is up and about by four,
plucking at bedclothes, pouring birdsong
into our ears. The pillows twist, drenched
in sound, twin beds barely contain us,
the duvets hardly wraparound.
From somewhere a thought
slides under the thatch,
delivers the breaking news
that a man of misfortune and grief
is lying awake in the room next door,
that the kitchen is over stocked with knives
and critical words wrecked yesterday’s walk.
Imagine the headlines the story will make,
says the thought, consider the local tourist trade,
never quite the same
and now there’s a heavy tread
on the stairs. Something comes bumping
against our door, gives a muffled groan.
Saliva dries in my throat
and your brother brings tea on a tray—
no obvious sign of a knife.
© Jenny Hockey
After the diagnosis
there were nights when I knew
no-one, forgot even the number
of the ward they moved you to,
when I sat in big nameless spaces
by trembling machines
that offered me Coke and Twix,
had healthy trees and birds
plastered to their sides,
days when I walked up Brocco Bank
to you — your summer-brown skin,
sun-whitened hair, those brand new
pajama bottoms, exultantly navy blue,
nights of a sighing that peoples 10 pm
when no one cares if you stay or leave,
that sounds like the dead
who make the lift shaft their roost
and keep on reaching out
to patients no-one can ever put right,
days when I sat by your bed for hours,
my time no longer accounted for,
remember how bronzed my legs,
how short my denim skirt.
Now when we cycle past
those sheer grey hospital walls,
their concertina of windows
is watching over us.
© Jenny Hockey
Unasked Question No 5
When I’m walking over fields
where cows are folded to their grass,
a strand of you comes through:
‘Look sharp. Rain’s on its way’
The Pathé film about the Textile Trade
and how it cares for its war orphans —
I know you’re one of the grainy boys
clapping silently on the pavilion steps
and I wonder how your mother
could send you away for months,
away from your friend next door,
from the treasure you hid in the cavity wall,
paying out the string —
until the day you both let go.
Boats still anchor by the Exe
under the tower of St Margaret’s Church.
On the memorial built for a war
to end all wars, the name of a father
you barely knew, and later
the name of a brother.
© Jenny Hockey