The Knife
A black blade he made me
a no-shine stone-hewn seeming
rough thing with only a
shape-holding memory
of sliced skin
in the slow snow days drifting
unmarked into night
I ringed the raw haft
with elkhorn and malachite
dark bogwood
by the red firelight began
the long scouring the search
for the heft and the handhold
the rub and the rocking
the winter song
long before Spring
came the carving old frost stories
of deer and the dogs running
trees spreading snow-skirts
the red staining
a shining he made me
then and a sharpening
and took me twirling to the
deerskin door-flap
first day sun-glitter ran down
the blade like a cut
opening
like blood
sprinkling on snow
By Joy Howard
More about Joy
Joy Howard’s poems have featured in several anthologies: Beautiful Barbarians (Onlywomen1987), Dancing the Tightrope (Women’s Press 1987), Breaking the Waves (Virago 1988), and Not for the Academy (Onlywomen 1999). She retired in 2005, but still works part-time as a consultant and editor. As far as poetry goes, she has in her sixties discovered renewed excitement in writing, reading and publishing.
Joy was short-listed for the 2006 Chapter One Promotions Open Poetry Competition, and had two poems in this year’s shortlist. She is a co-founder of Grey Hen, a new independent press which aims to feature the work of older women, primarily from the North of England. She is a contributor to Grey Hen’s first publication ‘Second Bite’, and is currently working on a first collection.
Second Bite is also the name of a performance group of older women poets, of which Joy is a founder member.