It’s the chair she always sits in, at the back, just under the skylight. Here, she can keep her head down, read and not read, let the words ripple on the page, swim if they want to. Today, without reason, she looks up, sees a tableau of silence: three women standing utterly still, staring into […]

Yesterday I felt your weight beside me on the mattress. Later I saw you on the stairs.   Today I woke: the bed was empty, your pillow smooth.   I reached out – the bed was endless, my fingers too short, my eyes not strong enough.   I closed them and breathed in. I stood […]

Ash swirls as we rake up last night’s fire.   A half-burned photo lies in damp grass:   your dead ex-husband smiles out from the cul-de-sac   where you raised two sons, one of whom I married.   I flick a pile of oak leaves into the ash, pause to see   my children running […]

Peak lambing. Scarcely time to clear the pens for each new birth, and now two ewes are both in labour. One is just ahead;   experienced, she drops the first of twins without a sound. The other’s yet to break her waters, but homes in on the bleat,   convinced the lamb is hers. I’ve […]

And in that year my body was a pillar of smoke and even his hands could not hold me.   And in that year my mind was an empty table and he laid his thoughts down like dishes of plenty.   And in that year my heart was the old monument, the folly, and no […]

“Silver is sold in the old quarter and is pretty good value”   The jeweller’s son is learning the trade well. He picks out a fat silver pocket-watch. It has an antlered stag engraved on its case and he tells us it came from Scotland   one hundred years ago. We believe him. But I […]