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Lizard Queen / ragbonehair

@ragbonehair.bsky.social

Reside in Glasgow, live in my head. I write and craft and talk random shite. Mainly the last one. Queer, pretty left wing, fuck terfs/swerfs/bigots. They/she 🏳️‍🌈🇵🇸

351 followers808 following1.8k posts

LQragbonehair.bsky.socialOct 3, 2024 4:10pm

I think we've all read Maggie Smith's fabulous Good Bones poem, but I always think this one by Fleur Adcock is related in the protection of the small theme.

For a Five-Year-Old

A snail is climbing up the window-sill
into your room, after a night of rain.
You call me in to see, and I explain
that it would be unkind to leave it there:
it might crawl to the floor; we must take care
that no one squashes it. You understand,
and carry it outside, with careful hand,
to eat a daffodil.

I see, then, that a kind of faith prevails:
your gentleness is moulded still by words
from me, who have trapped mice and shot wild birds,
from me, who drowned your kittens, who betrayed
your closest relatives, and who purveyed
the harshest kind of truth to many another.
But that is how things are: I am your mother,
and we are kind to snails.

Fleur Adcock

LQragbonehair.bsky.socialOct 3, 2024 4:19pm

While we mention Fleur Adcock have this one of hers, a feeling I suspect we have all had. #poetry

Things

There are worse things than having behaved foolishly in public.
There are worse things than these miniature betrayals,
committed or endured or suspected; there are worse things
than not being able to sleep for thinking about them.
It is 5 a.m. All the worse things come stalking in
and stand icily about the bed looking worse and worse and worse.

Fleur Adcock

Lizard Queen / ragbonehair

@ragbonehair.bsky.social

Reside in Glasgow, live in my head. I write and craft and talk random shite. Mainly the last one. Queer, pretty left wing, fuck terfs/swerfs/bigots. They/she 🏳️‍🌈🇵🇸

351 followers808 following1.8k posts