Rachel Deering is a poet who lives in Bath (England) with her cat. She has a love of the natural world and what it can tell us about ourselves. In particular, she loves birds and trees. Rachel has two collections coming out in 2022 with Rare Swan Press. Her first collection, Crown of Eggshells, was published by Cerasus Poetry in 2020 and is available on Amazon. Rachel is a Director of the wonderful writing website ABC Tales (@ABC_Tales on Twitter) and posts new poetry on the site under the user name “onemorething”. She supports Signe Maene with Book Worm Saturday on Twitter @lit_Sat too. Rachel can be found on Twitter herself @DeeringRachel tweeting poetry, art, nature, myth, folklore, and photos of her cat.

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The Departure of Nightjars

Time plagues us all;
the finity of hours once counted out
in lots – impatient, nightjars quit the earth
to greet the toil of dusk
in churr vibrations of twilight alarms,
sing tuneless songs to old bones.
We work and sleep and remember,
we regret: these are the actions of time,
as unsubtle as a nightjar, but
they are milking moonshine 
while it lasts, brightened eyes
chasing littler wings, chasing light.
They are breaking up the stones 
of each day passed, unforgotten,
where yet another day is always breaking
endlessly against the manufacturing of dreams.
Only dawn can hasten
the departure of a nightjar from the dark, and 
having been dispelled, moth-bloated,
they are recalled by trees
to become secrets again of their bark,
to rest, to reimagine, to stop the clock.

Forthcoming in a collection published by Rare Swan Books, My Heart is a Crow.

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Morning

Dawn’s quiet heals the injuries
of noise, in the plumage of light,
being both woman and bird,
lies restoration: a winged welcome
and vale to the darkness of owl
and bat. Here, dew and river and
ocean are returned, bearing molecules
of mountain and breath of oak –
all reinstated to cloud, to be met
by the alchemy of lead and gold. 
I have been witness to this synthesis 
of not yet day, no longer night;
the metaphysics of sunrise,
hemmed with meadow clary.
It is more reliable than love,
ageless as a Titan, and each morning
I ask its gentle beacon
to give me back my wonder.

Exclusive to East Ridge Review

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Deus Ex Machina

A conclusion ought to be logical,
make sense of a narrative;
there is no lowered god 
to resolve an end for me.
I should have been born in Ancient Greece,
a woman of quietitude, hissed at
to mould a history of silence,
I would own nothing,
avow nothing;
a Maple seed that spins
on whichever wind can bear it.
I would speak with the rarity 
of frankincense, and even then
words would flurry from my empty vessel,
torn to incomprehensible pieces
of confetti of all the lessons
I had not been taught.
We all often desire to be something that we are not,
as if this, itself, is an act in a tragedy 
for which there is no longer a prize.
Hear me complain
that I have endured sorrow
without reward, where experience
or wisdom is overrated: that is true suffering,
and worse there is the flaw of victim hood,
I would say: I am a robin tricked
to sing at night by false light 
until neither sun nor lamp
could illuminate me to song,
here hearts stop only for death.

Exclusive to East Ridge Review

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Hazelnut

There is a story about a salmon
that swims in a devotional pool;
her silver-plated belly cradled
by water, which itself, is a fusion
of the pentagonal molecules
of hydrogen and oxygen
in the intimacy of a covalent bond.

The branches of nine hazel trees,
mirrored in scales, overlook
each plunge and leap of fish – 
how the electricity of myth 
is conducted here.
And a hazel will bend, nudged
by wind until it drops its fruit
into the open gape of mouth
reflected beneath, wrestled
by the black tongue and teeth 
of a king salmon that has bitten
into the night. Grown from catkin
to nut, this fish is fed a world 
of wisdom only for a man to bait,
and gobble it up
for the flesh of its knowledge.

What is stolen
that might have been shared,
what is slain 
that might have been spared, and yet,
if this salmon could speak,
she would only say 
that this is precisely in the way 
that to life, death is everything,
and life is everything to death. 

Forthcoming in a collection published by Rare Swan Books, My Heart is a Crow.