Natalie Crick has found delight in writing all of her life and first began writing when she was a very young girl. Her poetry is influenced by melancholic confessional Women’s poetry. Her poetry has been published in a range of journals and magazines including Cannons Mouth, Cyphers, Ariadne’s Thread, Carillon and National Poetry Anthology 2013.
Dear Sister
It is Winter here.
Snow has fallen.
“I am afraid”, said the moon.
She is beautiful tonight.
Now it is darker than December.
What is dead is a different colour.
My dead sister is neither a man nor a woman.
She is a ghost.
We do not speak of her
Anymore.
I turn away from mirrors
When I see her reflection.
The dead can no longer see
I no longer care.
O Lord of darkness,
I want my innocence.
Night’s End
Snow had fallen, I remember,
At the night’s end.
Do you hear his voice?
I am never alone.
And at the end?
I do not live.
It is forbidden to die.
The winds are changing.
Our dead brother waited
Undiscovered,
But very dark, very hidden,
As the earth became black.
The field was parched and dry,
Filled with death already.
You walk through it.
You see nothing.
God, He Is In The Air
God, he is in the air,
Rushing through the wind and
Over the hills.
Coming at her in waves at the seashore.
Grey gusts
Colour her cheeks crimson
As a bandstand balloon.
She doesn’t know why.
Polka dot flags
Hang in the air
For Madeline to stuff into her pinafore
In handfuls.
Mother and Father
Stand like sheep
In a snowstorm.
Turned into each other.
Out There, On The Hill Somewhere
The grey skies are
Fathomless.
A strange chill
Rushed across the moors
Spreading panic.
It is her, she is trying to tell us.
She is out there,
On the hill somewhere
Left all alone in the cold and dark.
I imagine it and rock.
Memories
Coming in the middle of the night.
Wanting to remember
Made her try to die
All night long.
Longing to bleed it out.
Crying for yesterday
With eyes like black holes.
A mirror breaks.
Something is not right.
I swear
I saw her standing there.
Bells tinkled in the wind
And I gaze all around and up to heaven.
Drowning in emptiness
In the thick, still air.
My darling, she is voiceless now.
I dream and dream
Of asking she:
“Are you the Queen of Death?”
Each day we drift into nowhere.
Life will end at the end.
Goodbye
The snowfield
Is still and quiet
In slumber.
Frosted blue in grief.
Remembering your eyes
Is what hurts the most.
Your eyes, your lips, your hair
Falling into a black amnesia.
I breathe in your air.
One kiss to thaw your bones.
You are frozen dead beneath the ground.
Now there is no sound.
Your little voice
Whispers in the dust
With white hair
Like Granddad.
The sky rolls
In depression.
And I am screaming your name
In the dark.
No one believes
That you are there.
You are following me around
Everywhere.
To tell me I am
Not alone.
When another day
Is done.
An angel is crying in heaven.
How far away
Is that star in the sky.
Goodbye, Goodbye.
Secret Life of Life
I am a child
Thrust open and disregarded,
Trashing through corridors unchained.
The sound poured into me then,
Like birdsong,
Sweet and softly tapping
At my heels.
Short bursts
Of stigma
Are attached to this threshold.
I wandered out, caught
Between the lines of cars.
Such activity frightened me
So I died with leaves.
Journey Into Afterlife
I wanted to go
Like “this is a last chance”.
To see you at nightfall
And see my shining star.
Brown rain streaks down my face.
And we
Stir passed stooped cottages
Of witchery.
What are you doing in there?
I feel drugged.
A dull throb above
My left eye.
I wish I could hold
Your hand,
Pressing your nails
Into your palm.
I wish
I could meet you
And find out
And drown in thick filth.
No Surprise
There was no rain
Through the sky sagged and slumped,
An old coat cradling the lane,
Wearing thin with empty pockets.
You are inclined to believe the latter; luminous purple, ashen green.
And you are wrong because I remember that part
But, I forget where we were. Does it matter?
For poignancy is often personified when we are lost.
We swallowed the road with great swooping gulps,
Bounding with confidence, as very small cars often do.
The moon ran with us, I noticed,
Which was thoughtful, because we were all alone.
The forest mob loomed up on the left,
Hurling hostile tremors from her core.
We bravely edged onward
Though our faceless friends were engulfed in her silent roar.
We tore through the black
And he followed.
In a soundless haze, the hooves vaulted upward,
Clearing us with space to spare.
