The Bothy

     after Esther Morgan
 
It’s just as you imagined:
               Hebridean light flooding the room,
                            an ocean breeze rippling home-made curtains.
 
You love the wrought iron window catch
               curling like a stray tendril,
                            the Lloyd Loom chair, the sea-green dresser.
 
It’s everything you wanted:
              this narrow path braiding the outcrop,
                            parting the fringe of ochre grass;
 
this wedge of earth in its rocky cleft –
              nothing ahead but the Atlantic,
                            nothing behind but a field of geese.
 
It’s what you knew you needed:
              this small, green hut, door thrown open
                            to thrushes and rabbit scat;
 
this almost-silence
              this inbreath
                            this outbreath.
 

Barbara Hickson

first published at Wildfire Words, 2020;
included in pamphlet A Kind of Silence, Maytree Press, 2021, ISBN 978-1-913500-19-7

 
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Going to Ground

Perhaps we’re foxes
digging our names in the earth.
When night comes
we’ll slip as mist into trees,
bark slant secrets to the moon.
By day, I’ll walk beside you,
scenting out similarities, a shared territory.
Both of us will feel the nearness of dusk,
the solace of rain on the air.
 

Barbara Hickson

first published in Channel Issue7, Autumn 2022;
included in Only the Shining Hours, Maytree Press, 2024, ISBN 978-1-913508-40-1

 
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At Logan Botanic Garden

These Koi Carp in the formal pond remind me
of the Timothy Hitsman shoes I wore on our wedding day.
Oyster pale, pearlescent, their texture could have been fish-skin.
 
They were slippery – smooth leather soles sliding on tarmac –
and skittish – slingback straps escaping the curve of my heel
so I nearly stepped out of them, left them
 
basking in the shade of azaleas,
afraid they might dart away
at any moment.
 

Barbara Hickson

Commended in the Editors’ Choice category of Magma Poetry Competition, 2018;
included in Only the Shining Hours, Maytree Press, 2024, ISBN 978-1-913508-40-1

 
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Ghost Apple

a polar vortex in Michigan
glazed each fruit in an orchard
shrouded it in ice
 
when the flesh within
thawed before its mantle
it rotted          seeped from the base
 
leaving a ghost apple
transparent
apparently intact
 
I thought of grief
the numbing shock of loss
the breaking down
 
the draining away of self
leaving a shell
externally perfect       but frozen
 
just
hanging
on
 

Barbara Hickson

published in Only the Shining Hours, Maytree Press, 2024, ISBN 978-1-913508-40-1

 
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