Dryad
by and published in Edition Two of Pomegranate
She tenders moss and ash and sets to catch
the water in the pan above the coals,
which I filter through. I turn to the light
asping from the oaks’ lattice, now latched
in the green and acorn weave of her ivy shawl.
She tenders moss and ash and sets her catch
aside. I watch the marshalling of night
in the caves of her silverbirch skin, a gauze
I want to filter through. I turn to the light
of the fire and a nightjar’s churring. Despite
the drought of my gaze she stays withdrawn
and tender. Moss and ash. She sets the catch
as I sieved water into the cooking pot.
The purifying that saw us through till dawn,
which filters through, though she turned into light.
I find her gone as the canopy’s jackdaws depart
and a spark of dew appends the hazel’s thorns.
The tendered moss and ash she set have caught
and I am filtered through. I turn to the light.
George Ttoouli
George Ttoouli is 28 years old. He works in London as the Education Projects Co-ordinator at the Poetry Society and in Coventry as an Honorary Teaching Fellow for the Warwick Writing Programme. As a freelancer he edits British Pensioner and co-edits Gists and Piths and The Oubliette. He received a Jerwood-Arvon Young Writing Apprenticeship in 2004 and was commended for creative non-fiction in 2007 by New Writing Ventures. He is fairly convinced that he shouldn’t be writing poetry, but he just can’t stop.