Carrie Etter
Old House, New Home
Following by eye the dark beams
as they rise and meet, rise and meet,
learning these new rooms’ shades
of natural and artificial light,
I smell rain on stone, in the view
of a sky of stone, storey upon storey
of weavers’ apartments, long derelict.
Five years in a foreign country –
the ghosts are not my ghosts.
This morning I hummed a childhood tune,
this afternoon I rummage for the words.
Tonight clouds will obscure the stars,
forsake me in unnavigable water.
What’s to do but drop anchor; wait
and wake to the smell of rain, the view
of a sky of stone; hum an old tune
and wait, humming, for words –
Carrie Etter lives in a 17th-century bakehouse in Bradford-on-Avon and teaches for Bath Spa University and The Poetry School. This year her poems have appeared in New Writing 14, The Rialto, Stand, TLS, and elsewhere.
Page(s) 52
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