Susan Wicks
Northern Lights 
Susan Wicks reading Northern Lights 
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Imagine a pale green liquid
rippling on the glass of your window,
a blush in the bottom corner
that used to be flame or sunset.
Imagine the light running
on the pane in a sudden fountain,
the glass cold under your fingers,
the sky unbroken, icy.
Imagine the greens of snow,
the blues of a trapped river,
a street’s defiant welcome
passing in a flash of neon.
Outside, a town’s breath freezes,
the curved rim of the mountains
stretches, glitters to the horizon.
Beyond this snow-swept place
the people walk in greyness.
You unroll your bed, stretch out
with your hands behind your head
to watch this Arctic night
wheel on its brightest stars,
and the show only beginning.
rippling on the glass of your window,
a blush in the bottom corner
that used to be flame or sunset.
Imagine the light running
on the pane in a sudden fountain,
the glass cold under your fingers,
the sky unbroken, icy.
Imagine the greens of snow,
the blues of a trapped river,
a street’s defiant welcome
passing in a flash of neon.
Outside, a town’s breath freezes,
the curved rim of the mountains
stretches, glitters to the horizon.
Beyond this snow-swept place
the people walk in greyness.
You unroll your bed, stretch out
with your hands behind your head
to watch this Arctic night
wheel on its brightest stars,
and the show only beginning.
Susan Wicks’ most recent collection, Night Toad: New and Selected Poems (Bloodaxe 2003), was a PBS Recommendation. She is Director of the Centre for Creative Writing at the University of Kent.
Page(s) 77
magazine list
- Features
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- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- 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
- Grosseteste Review
- 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