Mantra to protect all children

By

this is a mantra to protect all the eggs
in the nest, eggs with their thin shells,
porcelain-thin, dim glimmer of light,
a dull clink of day-sound, fine silk pulled taut

this is a mantra to lash a limber reed fence
around the children trace a chalk circle
around the children bubble-wrap around

this is a mantra to protect against blueface
as the cord tightens around the throat
the pelvis shifts and a yo-heave-ho
on a blob with a pulse, a tangle of veins
too hard too soon, birth a mess of half-formed
organs a wet no-name membrane

this is a mantra to protect tiny breathing holes
stopped by the spittle and mucus of a kiss,
for birdcage ribs of meerschaum against the press
and squeeze of bones, split hooves, webs, fins, thick
claws and pads, whose owners step back to keek
at a dawn, salmon-tail, a star – for the hairline crack
of a skull collapsing like amaretti under the love-heel

the unintentional heel the unaware and unthinking,
the well-meaning, the achilles heel, the crushing
parental heel, the smothering stacked heel,
the faraway fatherly feathery fugitive winged heel

this is a mantra to protect all children
from the thirty-metre-deep, lungbursting five-hundred-bar
escaped-steam-hissing pressure
of the splashdown after flying too close to the sun,
of broken wings, awkward dreams of teachers
bad marks badgers and/or badasses, hatred of lemon
drizzle cake and hanging baskets, sugar tongs, grape scissors,
kra-zee golf, doilies, fear of the noose the gibbet thumbscrews
humiliation drugs heights lawyers and reams of paper;
inability to articulate bend or get it right, failure
to make the grade reach the summit catch the dawn
the wave the cold the riptide the ball the drift
or the train

this is a mantra to protect all children
from the sugar sweetie sugar surfeit trickling
through keyholes under doors down drainpipes overflowing
from guttering in drips in wet gobbets from the eaves
and windowsills of the skewwinking gingerbread house

this is a mantra to protect the children
from the knowledge the wise the wisdom they pass
down
with the sugar – fill the pail light the fire – medicine
deities rules regulations recipes for baba ganoush
angel-cake and disaster the potholes the landfills
the fillings the unexploded bombs the warheads the dread
the dreck the muck the sick the tack the block the lack

this is a mantra to protect all children from
us

Claudia Daventry

Claudia Daventry is a confused European whose grandfather got his name from her great-grandfather Schnackenberg, who stole it - once he landed safely in England - from a radio mast he liked. She was born in London, is also a bit Scottish and Irish, studied French and Spanish in Oxford and lived and worked in Paris and Barcelona before moving to Amsterdam - which she left with her three daughters (and a Dutch cat) for St Andrews, Scotland, where she now lives and writes. Her work has won various awards including the International Bridport Prize, and has appeared in several reviews and anthologies including The Dark Horse, The Irish Literary Review, The Island Review, Poem and Poetry London as well as at the Commonwealth Games and the JAM music festival as libretto commissions. She wrote a contributing canto in ottava rima for the Modern Don Juan by Divers Hands. Her solo chapbook, from Templar, is The Oligarch Loses His Patience.

Share Your Poetry

Always free. Always open. $50 per accepted poem.

Submit

Categories