A Gift of Rivers

Kate Foley

• Publisher: Arachne Press
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781909208193
• eBook ISBN: 9781909208964
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: European Poetry
• Index: Literature

Kate Foley is a much published and respected poet with many awards to her name. This, her 8th collection is made from meeting, migration and marriage: poems reflecting the journey of one poet and her wife, across linguistic and geographical boundaries - and with Brexit in the offing, it's far from over yet.

CATECHISMS

i Who made You?

Who made you? God made me.

Why did God make me? Little girl

voices, piercing as a chalk squeak, filling

late autumn’s afternoon classroom dusk,

believing in the importance of themselves

chanting. Like allintergethergirls, this

fineweathergirls, knowing if you dropped

the rhythm, made the rope stutter, something

that hung between you might break. Snap

of a brass switch. Shadows run from Mother

Monica’s habit. Worn soap, no longer ivory,

her face in the scrimped, yellow 40 watt glimmer,

is like all mothers’ thinking abstractedly of tea,

can’t or won’t tell the big secret I know

she knows, Who or Why or How I must be?

ii The Means of Grace

Pamela Grierson wasn’t even a Catholic.

She had tight fair baby curls – you could

unkindly say a frizz – and small teeth

which would age grey, not yellow but

Mother St Helen, whose teeth were already

yellow and Mother Aquinas, whose farmer’s

face reddened as she looked fondly, knew

despite being a Prod, she could do no wrong.

‘Original Justice’ that state is called and wangles Noble

Savages and Prods whom Providence has excluded

from the Means of Grace, into Heaven. ‘Why?’

I argued. ‘She’s here at school. Invincible Ignorance!’

A mean, ungraceful choice of weapon. The sin

of logic over kindness. It will always win.

iii And the Hope of Glory

which gathered at the door of the chapel

in febrile silence, in the splash of holy water

on your dress, in the thin, wobbly voices of nuns,

and the shadows round the blaze of white and gold,

Himself, who never failed to disappoint.

But the old, brown gardening nun who swallowed

and smiled as I cut her irises to the corm,

then showed me the folded purple thrust and green

that has to grow, knew skill, weather, luck

and kindness, all as strands of hope,

the ontology of her garden not

what it seemed but twisted together,

rough and strong as twine

supporting scarlet runners or a vine.

iv For Four out of Seven Sacraments

you get a white dress, well I suppose

in a mother and baby home they lend

you one. Late to communion, wouldn’t

wear a sash, suffered rag curlers, skew-

whiff wreath, no spectacles, sun blazing off

the shiny serge bellies of the marching band,

Our Lady’s grotto a white blur. Confirmation –

legs longer, dress shorter, pink bishop’s hand

and waiting, waiting for that friendly

fat pigeon who never came, to light on

my shoulder, nibble my ear. Somewhere

in that g...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• CONTENTS
• Dedication
• PERMISSION
• WISHBONE
• CATECHISMS
• A LOOSE CONFIGURATION
• A LITTLE LOCAL LOVE
• LIKE A GLOVE
• ORDINARY EXILE
• FOREIGNERS
• MOTHERS AND FATHERS
• UNMASKED
• From THE SILVER REMBRANDT
• STICKS
• BECOMING ENOUGH
• THE QUAIL SYNDROME
• JAIL BREAK
• SHEEP MAY SAFELY
• HERE’S THE CHURCH, WHERE’S THE STEEPLE?
• BACK TO BASICS
• A GIFT OF RIVERS
• WIVES
• WHEN I LIE NEXT TO YOU IN SLEEP
• I AM YOUR SECOND LANGUAGE
• IN THE DOGWATCHES
• SLEEPING TOGETHER
• HEART SURGERY
• TO THE FIELD OF REEDS
• COPYRIGHT