It’s a Set Up

Mind hurtles into the field, brushes
a stem-
tipped snail
who’s lost all track of time,
I like to think, forgetting I shouldn’t
make an impression – do I
agonise or
leap – I being the hero
who discovers the floor is rigged
with a delicate trip-wire
system – grasses,
insects, dewy blooms of
moss and shrubby flower – by such
abundant hurtability, I find myself
surrounded.

Bird Watching

A surprise to find amid this year’s
cohort of
leaves, a bird with its
back to me. What was the
bird watching
or was it staring into
space or into a thought
all its own? I went to say
ahem, but
it turned out
my mouth was gone.
A surprise.
The bird with its
back to me as if
I could be the background.

Isabel Galleymore’s second poetry collection is Baby Schema (Carcanet 2024). Her poems have featured in the New York Review of Books, the TLS and Poetry. In 2023-24, she was a Fellow at Harvard's Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. She is an Associate Professor at the University of Birmingham.