The Quill’s Tale
Dickens’ House, Broadstairs 2024


 
Pick me up. Hold me in your palm and feel
the throb of my pulse aching for parchment,
my master’s fingers curled around me
for I have so much more to give.
 
You are standing in spaces where Dickens
shaped the pages of ghosts and sailing boats.
Will you be the one to lift my feathered neck
and dip my dry tongue into ink, a living thing?
 
Look to the horizon from the mahogany desk
and watch white horses rear and buck,
Havisham lace riding waves, flowing manes
a scribble on the surface of the English Channel.
 
All the quintessential names drip from my lips.
I still taste them - the putrid stink of Magwitch
as he rose from the fog of a Kentish shore,
the metallic taste of Marley, Jaggers, and Sikes
 
and all the lost, exploited boys he penned,
sculpted into men, embellished with fortune:
the craftsman of love and happy endings.
Pick me up. Hear me whisper through feathers.
 
Kate Young
 
If you have any thoughts about this poem,  Kate Young would be pleased to hear them