poetry

Callum Featherstone

Sligeachan’s Song (Shelly’s Place)

I’m the waters; still —

running.

Oozing was Hebridean sorcery
outslipt liquid’s shaman
her name is, Sligeachan,
to her neigh-bours.

At, Shelly’s Place,
where silver foam horses sleep
alongside uisce enablers
drams canter at pace.

Whilst waterfalls slipstream
down the rocks to the basin
pooled equestrian dreams
plunge crashed stony abrasion.

As wishing-well goes
lifeforcing pucas and kelpies.
Missing spells flow
proof’s unliving to help me.

My well-wishing legs, froze
time slowed with the waters; still —

running.

To cascades wet, crispy-cold
inside, Sligeachan’s song,

                                                              caught;

myself: humming.

I became the waters;

Two of Sligeachan’s horses,

One of Shelly’s placed sons and daughters.

I’m the waters; still —

running.


© poormansdreams

Callum Featherstone

Birdly Heart’s search for their Firs

Our hearts were the open wings of birds.

Outstretched and clinging to our firs.

Our homes were beaten tracks
of leaf and rock.

Not sallowed grey tarmac-
Adam’s Eve-il plot.

A shaman was soothing backs
with a rootly block.

From a hallowed far back
plant among the crop.

Children sang & hummed
with their small & cheeping neighbours.

Whilst druid’s bodhrán drum
brought on bovine bleating labours.

Water complimented skies
as nightly they fell together.

Polar undocumented ice
plumed white a dovely feather.

Community grew closer
during harvest, through the winter.

Venerated ghosts were
offered ardour’s effigy for tinder.

Landscapes teemed with riverstreams
where fisher’s cast their net & line.

Keen proteges would from under treen
hope to scope the catch after their climbs.

Yet, that’s all but gone now, & I lament
for the time before time forgot.

Those homes, rivers, trees are instead cement.
Byway of climbing to the top.

And, from the top what did we vision
for the far-reaching hills and plains?

Concrete blocks forged by derision.
For flighty creatures fall from grace.

Where fowl once flew from bush to cape
memories stir underground.

That yearn to feel our firs & sakes
soothe lands, peoples. 

Lost, unfound.

We search all over concrete forests.

For our green missing firs.

The cost to our hearts? 

Their open wings clipt infront of dying birds.


© poormansdreams

Callum Featherstone

A Timeless Land

Cartwheeling
went the grand-
father clock’s
arms & hands.

Along each ceiling
above the strands
of unstarts unstops
in A Timeless Land.

Where waters reach
wrapping wisteria around
themselves in every vine
a wetter version of a minute.

There, solsticed leaves
untrapped grow free & proud
& houred grapes squeeze syned
durations to taste like winely spirit.

Spans do not run late
& do not stand still
for they have no limbs
nor face to tell.

We mere mortals
with time to kill
the enchanted incant-
ation of our spell;

“What time is it?!”

“Make sure you’re
there on time!!”

In nighttime’s journey
to A Timeless Land
we don’t hear the clang-
ing bells that chime
empty questions
or commands.

You are no longer
a slave to master Time
when eyes do close
with slumber’s sand
your soul there is whole
ev’ry second of your while.

© poormansdreams

Callum Featherstone

Mysty Mynded Fountains

It’s hard, this life at times. Like;
carv-
ing algebra equat-
ions
into granite.
With
mysty mynds
and all of
those, why?, god-
ammits.
Yet,
pers-                           ever-                           ance
has                     found                     me,
lost. And, carried me when I’m nought
& cross. It’s not easy, but if it was,
would we care, as much?
For, every raindrop, that fills the puddle,
the lake, the river and the ocean.
Has it’s journey of which to speak of, through it’s own cascading potion.
A feeling, an emanation, a glimmer, an emotion. A way, to make, a shimmer in the sheen, over brook or stream,
in every fountain, of our mysty mynded ; notions.


© poormansdreams

Callum Featherstone

Tomorrow’s Path

Yesterdays lay at the pyre.

Where my stomach’s fire sparked a rage.

Flames were foregone failings.

Licked to heights of summer rays.

Mood’s churchly spire and blue railings.

Now, coat in dew from Autumn’s haze.

A guttural roar has turned to water.

Gushing torrents from my face.

A cleanse of force gave no willing quarter.

Healing coolly that pyre’s blaze.

Yesterdays they were flecks of ash.

That plumed, then, fell from yore, beneath.

Tomorrow’s mystic, marvelled path.

Rising, daily, just below my feet.


© poormansdreams

Callum Featherstone

Spirit Dreams of the Uisce

I threw them ..




.. waited ..




..  and watched.


The water bulged.


Subtle, soft,
rippling creases
in Manannán mac Lir’s forge.

An uisce — Scotch
coalescent Irish Moss.

That only sea and river
Gods
could in thoughts divulge
through incantation’s
soak of aquatic creatures.

Then, out of
the swell’s depths
a Selkie leapt
over a Merrow
like a silver birch
long slept
somersaulted
by a sparrow
where wet
secrets are kept
under the lid
of mine eyes
and those on
the faced design
of my stone-
made pebble
that became
their coin arrow.

For there is
mystic magic
in spirit dreams
of the uisce.

And, so, I fathom ..

.. that each wish
that we cast
from the rock
to the coffer
only bears fruit
at steeped last ..



.. under the water.


© poormansdreams

Callum Featherstone

Nighttime’s Daughter

Nighttime’s daughter,
is waiting for a bus.
Stopped.
To come on home.
With her mind’s eye,
a yellow half-moon.

Pavements all pool.
Lagoons.
Guttural gully rumbles.
Rolling on back, beseeched.
By runaway days.

“Walking through our streets,
laden with reminiscenct mists.
Past is heaviest under feet,
where souls bawled into fists.”
Spits, the hiss of factory steam.

I meander on.
Mesmerised by,
flash-
backs.
A gleam, in ancient river’s stream.
Flash-
caught, in semi-crescent
spy’s tide.

© poormansdreams

Callum Featherstone

No Man’s Lake

A black cloud’s liquid flowers
drop their fuchsia sapphire
soaked cascades.

Leaving lacquered shrouds insipid showers
‘cross dilution’s quagmire
broke landscapes.

I walked among them.
Wet.
To feel their smooth caress upon my skin.

They talked above me.
Fret.
And, spoke of a fine mess I’d put them in;

“No man’s lake becomes a river
with hands around to hold it in.
Water should run free
like atonement’s teardrops
escaping deviled ducts of sin.”

And, as the glacier melted
I realised while standing still
that I’d fell from my mistake
aside my lonely lake
my final memory;

their river forming high upon the hill.

© poormansdreams

Callum Featherstone

Autumnal Rains

Fine and smooth are Autumnal rains.
That pine to soothe, then, wipe away,
the whipped raze of zealous rays,
that crack and blister over staves,
and under paves.
Proud and boastful in Summer days.

The wilds remove bare, insomnal cage,
a skyblue booth, when, white turns grey,
as drips came, quelled was jealous rage.
A blackened vista, covers brave,
bands thunder made.
Loud unroast on wondrous scape.

A cleansed motif oozed,

to bless this age.


Sent is relief’s truce;

cerule whet’s mage.



© poormansdreams

Callum Featherstone

Featherstone

The Featherstone surname is a Northern English locational surname, derived from places in Staffordshire, Yorkshire, and Northumberland. 

The name originates from the Old English words “feðerstan” or “fe(o)ther-stān,” meaning a prehistoric structure of four stones or a tetralith (a burial chamber for a chief).


I screamed stone — once set in ice.

Where my life’s home, was.
Immoved from.

Swallowed whole.

By, that time;

A cavern’s jaws, wide,
with teeth, all labelled:
misery.
Sidled up, alongside,
to champ the hearth,
that lived in me.

A loss, embossed,
in rock and frost,
chomped heavy, crush-
ing heartly hinterlands.


I screamed stone — once set in ice.

Lochs of moss
were flossed across,
hillock, levied, to Hollow
Rust, darkly, in command.

Memories pervade,
in attempts to thaw,
froze alabaster’s
keen appetite,
for death’s lament.

Every murmured age,
that we spent, before,
chose as everlasting
safekeep stalagmites.

Those sentimental,
pastimed sediments.


I screamed stone — once set in ice.

‘Til our soul’s faced, a symbolic, snug embrace. I broke free from cold, obelisk’s raze. It stoked our heart’s hug, in it’s rightful place.
After, grasping you, afterlife, screamed stones,
are, melodic, monumental tones.
And, set ice,
like you, is, warm,
yet, crystallised.
Just, as your thoughts, saw for us, precious lives. You lit up our archway with gleaming lights.
A matriarchal, tetralithic spirit-guide.

Now, you are; dreamed stones —
in our feathered eyes.

© poormansdreams