Sheila Wild
Shiant Wife
Second Light Poetry Competition 2008 THIRD PRIZE
He thinks it’s easy
to step backwards
off the cliff
with only a horsehair rope
between me
and my slung shadow,
but it’s a skill
to pluck sorrel
from the eye of the wind,
while fulmars vomit fish oil
and shearwaters skim
the skin of the sea.
I swing down the cliff
with a creel on my back
and in my hand the knife
he gave me as a wedding-gift.
I hang on like the last
of the scurvy grass,
lean and wind-bitten
and sullen as salt.
Competition judged by Gillian Clarke
Page(s) 15
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