Poems by Jude Cowan Montague.

 

Children

In Solapur
Mahastra,
for more than
five hundred years,
to improve
the health
of babies,
they have
taken them
up many
steps, right
up to the
top of the
high shrine,
stood on
the edge
holding the
infants for
all to see,
and then
dropped
them
o
f
f

t
o

bounce

o
n

a

small blanket stretched tight by the devout.

 

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Our own realities

We tend to create our own realities
in stilettos and legs that shiver
in Leicester Square
when a cold May wind blows.

 

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Baby Races

Mothers shake rattles and shriek,
babies crawl, fathers applaud.
The fastest wins, the human race begins.

 

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Polar Swim

The two or three year old
     weighing 200 kilos
swam in from Greenland.
     Wandering like Beowulf,
through northern waters,
     the dragon-slayer landed.

No chance for his deeds
     to be sung in a shining
epic to dying warrior
     culture. He was shot.
Now what to do with
     this fabulous carcass?

Once it would have made
     a great rug. Measure.

 

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Repair

A cosmonaut-plumber
is flushed with success.

His crew are relieved
that the only toilet

on the space station
has been fixed.

 

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Newman

No hail of bullets,
he runs towards death
chased by cancer,
doing nicely.

 

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Verdon

The young canoeists went
into the canyon
with a storm above their heads.

Danger! Dam and power station:

The shoes and swimming trunks
of one survivor are drying
on the picnic bench outside the inn.

 

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Homecoming

With this gas mask on, you may rustle through your soaking dusty things, and if your house has not sunk
too completely, you can possibly pick up photographs of before you were reduced to the clothes on your back.