Wild Daughter

By Lauren K Nixon

A collection of accidental poetry exploring place, time and what it means to be a person.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Mysterium
• Release date: Jul 12, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005632380

Lauren K Nixon

An ex-archaeologist enjoying life in the slow-lane, Lauren K. Nixon is an indie author fascinated by everyday magic.She is the author of numerous short stories and the Chambers Magic series. She also curates the fabulous Short Story Superstars, a vibrant community of writers, whose anthology is now available!Having studied Archaeological Sciences at Bradford University - a truly global subject - Lauren went on to discover that what everyone always told her about there being no jobs in archaeology was quite true. Happily, there are many things to keep her occupied, and when she's not writing she can be found gardening, singing, reading, playing the fool and playing board games.

Book preview

Blackbird in the apple tree

My grandfather planted

Below a cloud-streaked,

frost-laden sky:

What omen are you?

What news do you bring

To this unsettled, too-warm winter?

To this fresh-faced, incautious spring?

If hope is the thing with feathers,

Perhaps it also has a yellow beak,

A jet black eye

And the tang of sour cooking apples,

On a tree that was always more than half magic,

In the glisten of a tardy frost.

Mist-Runner

(From Functioning as Intended)

I stand at the keel

Of a fleet running warship.

A swift, sleek, mist-runner

That in older days harried the coast

Of this land that I call home.

I should be offended –

The blood that was spilled was part of my own.

In the old way of speaking,

In this wide, green land

I can see the line of my people

Back to the heathen under the mound.

It was my kin they were killing;

Women like me, carried off

To a less than certain fate.

Across the globe, flame and fear still

strike like distant thunder.

I am ‘civilised’,

And feel the shame and outrage

At every fresh assault

On the peaceful and the innocent

Of today.

I know the blood soaked

Into that timbered deck –

But I feel it less than I ought,

As a civilised creature

Among my fellow beasts.

This ship, these splintered boards

Were a part of that same storm

In an older age.

The time of heroes,

When killing meant glory or shame

And no one had invented

The word for guilt.

I live an ordered, quiet existence,

Free of the blood and smoke

Of that older age,

But gazing at

That ring-whorled prow,

I long for the storm and the sword.

To take to the whale-roads

Of mine or someone else’s ancestors

And win glory with blood.

To see the ice leaving the winter stream

And know it is time

To follow my friends

Into battle,

Into song.

To meet death smiling,

With conviction, not fear.

To delight in life and roar into the dark,

Happy to take my place among the steadfast ones

In a wide, warm hall

Where the mead never runs dry.

I fancy