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@catsbearsandme.bsky.socialOct 9, 2026, 5:05 PM

#Poetry
#BlueskyPoetry
#CarolAnnDuffy

Rain by Carol Ann Duffy

Not so hot as this for a hundred years. You were where I was going. I was in tears. I surrendered my heart to the judgement of my peers. A century’s heat in the garden, fierce as love. You returned on the day I had to leave. I mimed the full, rich, busy life I had to live. Hotter than hell. I burned for you day and night; got bits of your body wrong, bits of it right, in the huge mouth of the dark, in the bite of the light. I planted a rose, burnt orange, the colour of flame, gave it the last of the water, gave it your name. It flared back at the sun in a perfect rhyme. Then the rain came, like stammered kisses at first on the back of my neck. I unfurled my fist for the rain to caress with its lips. I turned up my face, and water flooded my mouth, baptised my head, and the rainclouds gathered like midnight overhead, and the rain came down like a lover comes to a bed.
@catsbearsandme.bsky.socialSep 18, 2026, 5:19 PM

#Poetry
#BlueskyPoetry
#CarolAnnDuffy

In Mrs Tilscher's Class by Carol Ann Duffy

You could travel up the Blue Nile with your finger, tracing the route while Mrs Tilscher chanted the scenery. Tana. Ethiopia. Khartoum. Aswân. That for an hour, then a skittle of milk and the chalky Pyramids rubbed into dust. A window opened with a long pole. The laugh of a bell swung by a running child. This was better than home. Enthralling books. The classroom glowed like a sweet shop. Sugar paper. Coloured shapes. Brady and Hindley faded, like the faint, uneasy smudge of a mistake. Mrs Tilscher loved you. Some mornings, you found she’d left a good gold star by your name. The scent of a pencil slowly, carefully, shaved. A xylophone’s nonsense heard from another form. Over the Easter term, the inky tadpoles changed from commas into exclamation marks. Three frogs hopped in the playground, freed by a dunce, followed by a line of kids, jumping and croaking away from the lunch queue. A rough boy told you how you were born. You kicked him, but stared at your parents, appalled, when you got back home. That feverish July, the air tasted of electricity. A tangible alarm made you always untidy, hot, fractious under the heavy, sexy sky. You asked her how you were born and Mrs Tilscher smiled, then turned away. Reports were handed out. You ran through the gates, impatient to be grown, as the sky split open into a thunderstorm.