Years clanking in buckets, more years
snuffling in ditches, danced at shearings
and pig killings, my life in the country,
my life in the village, the owl blinks
in the thatch, the fireback blackens.
I was a girl, the sun flamed in a sky
of thistles and hemlock shaken above me,
I lay down close to the water.
Winter in, winter out
the wind nags me. Now he’s back
from long absence, his boots
at the scraper, a squire
off walking the parish muttering
hoofbeats on roads I’ve not travelled. In his sleep
knives clatter, armies gather,
storms rake the upland, a girl
goes singing a love song over the watermeads
or he’s crying
so then I’ve lost you,
in the old river the moon
is still glittering.
I had been
all these years a stone to him, a hush
in his city of streetcries, or a light
he’d snuffed once and would light again,
pleading he’s sorry and such, head in a sling,
dragging his deaths like a whale
round with him. He’s amazed
there’s life in me, blood’s thumped
breath and tongue to tell him
he’s mocked with his art. And he’d thank
my long waiting to greet him,
my hand at the latch, glad and a fool
when he comes home stomping his feet
with a comment I’ve wrinkled and thickened,
but it’s years since I missed him.
I was
content and will be again glimpsing
through trees the river’s loop,
poppy’s glare, harebell weighed
on the wind’s stir.
Celandine bleaches,
the cold field’s bleating winter
but in age there’s fire
he announces, surprised again
and again stares at his table
and taking his pen starts up
some tale of a woman
sixteen years a statue
because of a husband’s jealousy,
and him wrong in the first place.