Clare Crossman
In Yorkshire
It can be nothing but Emily’s rain.
The way it falls on your face,
cold as a spring, carrying the
weight of all water.
The weather drives you inward
towards the fire, to close doors,
shut the curtains, sit close to the grate,
and wait for an end to the wind’s singing.
We huddle in the bleakness.
Shelter in the small chapel,
with its sermons of damp
and echoes of preachers.
The rain has erased the graveyard names,
filled them with moss,
softened angels and cherubs almost to skin.
When it stops we walk out into the glassy air.
Full of deep pools and upturned
leaves, that float lapping at the dead
taking them back to the elements.
We are no more than small figures
stepping out in a stone valley
on the granite road for home.
The solitary houses with blackened walls
stare back solid and oak framed.
And somewhere beyond us,
the ghost of a woman who saw the savageness
and named it, before
the wildness took her back to the air
and scattered her and her papers on the sky.
Page(s) 16
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- Pen Pusher Magazine
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- Poetry Salzburg Review
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- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
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- Shearsman
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- Staple
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- Thumbscrew
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