Patricia Bishop
Titling Shadows
The church is on the other side
of the estuary being beautiful
may not save it.
I went there once
with the children
the day full of sun and chat
though something happened.
Gone now, the man’s dead,
anyway I never knew him.
Today the mud is bared,
the sea out
the boats tied and tilting
as if they might sink at high tide
instead of rising as they did yesterday
and Thursday and the day before.
The season s done and the inevitability
of winter is honed in the fresh winds,
the late sun.
Inside the tidy school - quiet.
Our children safe?
Nowhere is -
not the estuary mud or the fields
by the church, even the lanes
are haunted
and each day we wait breathless
for the rattle of the gate, the child’s shout,
‘I’m home! I’m home!.’
Page(s) 50
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