Belinda Rimmer
Sapling
My father thought he could cure his knee
by swinging his injured leg over the kitchen table.
I'd collect my dolls to watch from the doorway.
He's ruptured his cruciate ligament, I'd say,
as if I understood the words.
From there I could touch
the taper and curve of his wooden crutches,
propped against a wall like saplings;
could imagine my black crayon
had made grains in the ash-wood,
lines headed one way, then the other – a pirate's map.
If my father caught me looking I'd flip my gaze
into the garden, to the beginnings of a plum tree,
delicate in the sun.
But it didn't draw me the way those crutches did.
Years later, that tree still stands. On visits home,
I'll settle on a blanketed lawn to sketch it,
adjust my pencil to suit the light, set the lines to be reborn.
I know this tree and its moods better than I knew my father.
Sometimes I'll think of his hands
gently planting the next-to-nothing of a sapling,
of his shadow where other shadows now fall.
It's as though I can see him.
A stranger picking plums.
Sapling was runner up in the Ambit poetry competition, and published in their magazine. It is also in Belinda’s pamphlet, Touching Sharks in Monaco.
Bio
Belinda has worked as a psychiatric nurse, lecturer and creative arts practitioner. Her poems have been widely published, including: Under the Radar, Ambit, Prole, Acumen, Ink, Sweat & Tears. In 2018 she came second in the Ambit Poetry Competition. She was also a joint runner-up in the 2019 Stanza Poetry Competition. She is one of the two winners of the Indigo-First Pamphlet Competition, 2018, with her pamphlet, Touching Sharks in Monaco (published Spring 2019). She has a PhD in Women's Voices in Contemporary Poetry with Manchester Metropolitan University.
Twitter.com: @belrimmer
Email: belindarimmer@btinternet.com
