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Ruth Bidgood

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White Castle

Unexpectedly
there is peace here,
penetrating,  irrefutable.
Drum-towers and curtain wall
cherish a stillness.

The moat is full of irises.
Calm ripples out
over wide lands
to the horizon.

Arrow-slit archers here
were the best in the March,
but the garrison’s children
have won, making a game of it.
It’s their far-away laughter
the air holds.

Grass now, shadows on grass.
Stone, wind over stone.
Water, sliding of dark
under water.  Silence,
voices inside silence,
Hear me, hear me ....
gone.

Ruth Bidgood’s eighth collection, Singing to Wolves, is published by Seren this spring.  ‘When I write I’m responding to things I see, hear, think and wonder about, often small and passing things.  Sometimes it has taken years for the poem to incubate, though I can often spot what will eventually become a poem.  If  I don’t totally understand my own response, that can be a bonus - if  I can pass on my own sense of the mysteriousness of life, I’m pleased!  Often, as in these two poems, it’s a place I’m responding to - its atmosphere, and its layers of past and present human experience.

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