Bio
Clarissa Aykroyd grew up in Victoria, Canada and studied at the University of Victoria. She has also lived in Dublin, and is now a resident of London. She has published fiction, educational non-fiction, and reviews. Her poetry has recently appeared in Ink Sweat & Tears. Currently she works as Publishing Coordinator for LAMDA Examinations. She is the author of a blog about poetry and poets, The Stone and the Star http://thestoneandthestar.blogspot.co.uk/
Clarissa Aykroyd
Battersea Park, December
Battersea Park is Europe in the cold.
Seagulls star the icy pond like a poem
from Poland, and the Continental
coffee-drinkers murmur in a dream
which is not English. I have seen the Thames
like a cold canal on a Dutch day,
sharp bright houses in Chelsea-on-Amsterdam.
A married man smiles at me and I smile back
unthinking, lost in a bleaker Tivoli.
But if only I could name this the world,
then I could squeeze the Atlantic and step
over sea and land to Pacific light,
sky-flung airy light and fractured waves,
and hold it all, draw it down to my hands.
– London, December 2012