Pat Winslow
Capture A Sound
The cool ring of voices over polished floors,
the tiled interiors of bistros, bars,
roadside tabacs, the clatter of plates,
francs slapped down on wood, on zinc,
the flick of a lighter. Laughter comes as thick
as coarse tobacco and twice as dark.
The exact sound of summer. No other like it.
Bikes knife past - a collective ratchet of gears changing down.
On Ventoux, the grimpeurs chat effortlessly,
basso profundo in the pure air.
A bell rings out over Roussillon.
The dust gorges its clapped out throat.
The sunset of each fading note!
And bees shroud the valley floor.
Lavender is a noisy business.
It purple shifts as you pull up the hill.
Some nights a cork squeals free and pops,
a tent's zipped up, unzipped, zipped up.
Snake-pee dances and wriggles in moonlight
or shrivels in secret behind the bushes.
You lie awake listening. A litany. A chorus.
Plainsong.
The telephone chirp of cigales.
An owl -
Hibou! Hibou!
A distant car.
Only the heat lightning has nothing to say
It keeps up its silent babble all night.
It has an unmistakable talent for white.
A visual click that stays like a stuck needle.
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