E. P. Guest
Freshsilver sky
It was the freshsilver sky that reminded
me, when, as in a new awakening,
I gathered it had punctuated
an aridly prolonged tract on this
August Sunday. The forecast of heat
was pleasantly cheated, and in closely
stacked flats windows and doors were shut.
Nor was the air clogged with the systematic
invasion of sound that the dog days
are prone to spew out on their thick breath.
Instead there was a sky gleaming cool,
charged with a surprising hush, waiting
as though spread across endless moorland.
It seemed like another Saturday
afternoon at the library, that
second home of mine in childhood.
There, in the Observer’s Book, one bird’s
image broke the fetters of proportion,
with dense gold wings spanning pale grass
against the hint of a sky like today’s.
It finds, at last, a time for piercing
as it swoops, digs its talons in
and soars dwarf ingly beyond a world
of backs bent over data screens,
business never finished, fitting faces,
constant changes at Oxford Circus
and vain searches for situations vacant.
There is space for hope, at least, to fly
from this abyss of anonymity
to the splendours of some lonely eyrie.
Page(s) 9
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 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