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in collection The
Lantern Bearers, 2007,
Shoestring Press, ISBN 978
1 904886 50 1
A Winter's Tale
Out
of the blue sky, a drift of white flakes
falling
on your coatsleeve, on the old oakleaves,
so
for a moment it seems as if it’s snowing—
but
these are flakes of ash, blown upwards in that plume
of
mauvish smoke. Peer over the fence, and look,
deep
down in the amphitheatre, where the sun in winter
never
reaches, below the rows of frosted benches,
in
that place of trampled mud that is the stage,
there’s
a bonfire: a fierce blaze, the logs beneath
burnt
white already, and the gardener dragging
down
the aisles dead undergrowth and withered branches.
You
stand and watch, as though this were theatre too:
the
sloping rows of whitened seats, the shock of fire
in
this dank place, this pit of winter—
where,
on a summer evening, Peaseblossom danced
in
her muslin dress of sweet pea colours,
Titania
in rose petals and blue velvet
lay
on a bed of ivy, Puck tiptoed,
spilt
the juice of wildflowers on eyelids,
a
lantern was the moon, your daughter sat on your lap,
her
first Shakespeare, her eyes shining,
and
above you in the warm night sky the stars came out.
The
smell of bonfire smoke is hovering
in
the cold blue air. The flakes of ash
have
turned as if by magic into snow.
Elizabeth Burns
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last
update:
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Elizabeth
Elizabeth
Burns website
poetry favourites:
Scottish Poetry Library
Flax
Books
and in
the
shop
...
collections -
"The
Lantern Bearers",
Shoestring Press;
"Ophelia",
Polygon;
"The
Gift of Light",
diehard
pamphlets
-
"The Shortest Days",
"The Time of Gold",
"The Alteration"
and
"The
Blue Flower...",
Galdragon Press
anthologies:
"The
book of Hopes and Dreams", bluechrome;
"Images
of Women",
Second Light /
Arrowhead Press
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