Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

Travelling north, the sky pales to a wash of mother of pearl.
Past Bella Bella. Abandoned houses on the shoreline.
Silver loops suspended for a hair’s breadth of time
in the changing air of twilight. Oblique patterns in the rain.
Different densities of grey. It’s cold. My sister is sleeping, that is, trying.

She sees something from paradise. A raven sits on a turquoise hut in the
                                                                                             clouds,
some red nearby. Most statements have to be repeated once, sometimes
                                                                                                twice,
but it’s her habit of appearing to be in a dream that can be disconcerting.
Her moods change like a thousand noises.

She can be in a field of crickets and not hear a thing,
she’s in a silent world of crimson, blue or violet. She’s laughing,
it has a yellowish hue and is tiny, it’s as if she’s never seen a bird before,
and that odd looking into the distance kind of feeling when she’s talking to
                                                                                                  you
as if she’s not quite there. It’s how she likes to be seen,
head tilted to the sky with an air of pushing you away.

We’re on the beach now, the sea dark blue as an eye.
As a wave forms she collects moon shells from the shore,
pale as bone she puts one to her ear and listens to the lustre within.