Jean Harrison
'This is the hour I love, the in-between' - Eavan Boland
It is an hour to love, the in-between
neither day or night in the garden,
full of the fading of one, the approach of the other,
when trees and houses step back
and darkness looks soft.
The motorway too, an interim world
centring on movements
taking people I don’t know
to places I may never have heard of,
my destination still distant;
the services a lull
coffee and over-sweet biscuits
in a haze of voices and crockery
and for the moment
everything stands still.
Then entering Kathleen’s house
I see she’s begun to shrink,
to lose weight,
but the present holds
in an exchange of smiles;
a lightness like the bat
here in the garden
tilting and turning an hour or so
out from the dark of the Leylandii
and back. Over and round me.
neither day or night in the garden,
full of the fading of one, the approach of the other,
when trees and houses step back
and darkness looks soft.
The motorway too, an interim world
centring on movements
taking people I don’t know
to places I may never have heard of,
my destination still distant;
the services a lull
coffee and over-sweet biscuits
in a haze of voices and crockery
and for the moment
everything stands still.
Then entering Kathleen’s house
I see she’s begun to shrink,
to lose weight,
but the present holds
in an exchange of smiles;
a lightness like the bat
here in the garden
tilting and turning an hour or so
out from the dark of the Leylandii
and back. Over and round me.
Page(s) 7
magazine list
- Features
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- 10th Muse
- 14
- 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