The Academi Cardiff International Poetry Competition

2nd Prize Winner - Candy Neubert

Candy Neubert’s writing began in south Africa where her short story collection Zen Frog was published. Now widely published in the UK and 2nd prize winner also in the national poetry competition she has stories broadcast on Radio 4 and is completing a radio play.

Resurrection

Oh my mother you who have finally
lived long enough on this earth to discover
nothing matters in this whole world whatsoever

let us walk out together
in the wonder and amazement of the garden

sink your head down there my mother
that is deep and cold and dandelion
and every stem of it bends
powerless and glad beneath its sun
and is a sheet of light and is the lawn

lean into it – fall in it like a girl
or like a bird
                   unfold the ladder of your body
here my mother look the aching soil
delivers little shoots
their white roots bursting in a bed
whole fists of them threading
their way of silence under stone

silence my mother we have come upon
the pond
the tiptoes of our shoes
stilled by this flat surprise where
bugs lie under mud and without air
they have been wintering

and waterweed next month next week
rises my mother rises and the dandelion
and all the little shoots
                          and all the green grass
rises