Parch Marks

It is an unseasonable summer.

The sun strokes dry crumbling soil,

You can hear the grass grow

and wither out of the chapped earth.

Contiguous virgin clay, tilled loam

and built ground swelter restlessly,

bulbously heat-stretched and swollen.

Buried archaeological infections

pustulate to the surface,

A pockmark map of levelled

civilisations, Iron Age forts holed up

beside World-War bunkers.

Parched monuments tattooed

under farm skin and playing fields,

Waiting to soak up the erasure of rain

and slither back to anonymity.

© Aoife Troxel

Brutal Heat in The UK Is Revealing Hidden Footprints of Historic Civilisations

Aoife Troxel has been writing poetry since the age of six. Luckily, she's improved since then. Before becoming a legal adult she was already two-time winner of the Poets Meet Painters Competition youth section. She has also read her poetry in Sežana, Slovenia as Cuisle Young Poet of the Year.

Ronchamp

You who are no stranger to vandalism –

Do you feel the hurt-smash splinter-tinkle

of panes of painted glass? Your sanctuary

has been violated – Violence did no harm

to its thick masonry. But its device is

shattered.

The root of all evil prompted them.

The root of all evil has been delving deep for some time.

Would this stab at its heart or the cancerous

mutation of purpose kill you again?

In the moonlight, it grew fungal

dark and magnificent.

But there are those who would let it rot.

©Aoife Troxel

Vandals Break into Ronchamp Chapel

Aoife Troxel has been writing poetry since the age of six. Luckily, she's improved since then. Before becoming a legal adult she was already two-time winner of the Poets Meet Painters Competition youth section. She has also read her poetry in Sežana, Slovenia as Cuisle Young Poet of the Year.