Tuesday Poem: Kim Moore, The Drowned Fields

Although being without him now
would be like standing on one leg
still everything seems paper thin.

If my foot slips and breaks the surface,
I’ll fall to a land of drowned fields,
where the only language is the language

of the sky and the birds make endless
patterns in the air and the pools of water
are words the rain has left behind.

The birds are like shadows in the corner
of my eye, or silver, as if the sky
is throwing money to the ground.

Next to the path the grass moves beneath
my feet. Hummocks store black water
while his thoughts, impossible to ignore

push their way across the land like large
enthusiastic dogs. The lives I could
have led are silver threads across

the drowning land and birds come
together , then spread apart, as if the sky
opened its hand and let them loose.

Kim Moore


Kim Moore (who just happens to live in Cumbria) is a young British poet who is regarded as one of the bright stars of the future. Kim has won two of the UK’s most prestigious prizes for young poets - an Eric Gregory Award and the Geoffrey Dearmer Prize in 2011. She is 29 and works as a peripatetic music teacher, and is also in the final year of a part-time MA in Creative Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University. She has been published in the TLS, Poetry Review, The North, The Rialto and Ambit - all excellent places - and has read alongside Carol Ann Duffy at the Royal Exchange in Manchester.

The title ‘The Drowned Fields’ resonates with the weather up here in the northern hemisphere at the moment. I like the way the poem starts in mid-conversation, with images of a fragile relationship - the thin crust we all walk on with the ones we love before our lives become inextricably meshed together. The repetition of the words ‘drowned’, ‘drowning,’ emphasises the feeling of being overwhelmed and adds to the sense of danger - committing yourself to a relationship is one of the most risky things we do.

I particularly like this image:

‘ his thoughts, impossible to ignore
push their way across the land like large
enthusiastic dogs.'

And the way she describes the birds flocking and re-forming in the air,
‘.........as if the sky
opened its hand and let them loose.’

But somehow the birds, coming together and spreading apart, are another metaphor for the fragility of the relationship.
Kim Moore is one to watch.

For other Tuesday Poems please take a look at the Tuesday Poets' blog over at www.tuesdaypoem.blogspot.com
There's some great stuff!