At Drinkwaters
Tall tottering edge of a wall
stands higher than my head,
with corner stones
of wincing weight
declining to a pile of rubble:
residue of barn
and house and yard.
So this must be the angle of the barn,
or was it one side of the great arch
where the wind
would hurry the chaff away?
Impossible to say.
The walls have grown across the floors,
the harvest is grey stone,
bent cans and sandwich papers.
But something makes us stop
to touch the gatepost,
look across the clough
between the trunks of sycamores
that might have been a hedge
for those who lived here.
Bereft of names or faces,
wondering which was house
and which was barn,
we rub the mist
from long-gone panes
and squat with vanished children
on the doorstep.
Whistling from the dairy,
boots on flagstones,
white slap of linen on the line.
The clouds are building from the coast:
reluctant, we move on.
It's not much of a place
but on this wind-scoured moorland
half a home
is better by far than none.
magazine list
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- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
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- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The