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She doesn’t cut a single stalk to bring these bunches to us. She reads. Her voice calls us inside a wood and we see her shadow rise up from her body,
tall and separate; suggestion of Persephone — always moving, sewing snowdrops
among small crowns of leaves, patch by patch, within the dark and slippery contract of a kiss.
Rose, go on weaving the wet path.
I take from you this poem for the time of year my farmer-mother calls the Quarter Day of Candlemas, when spring begins.
My mother loves the way the evening moves, extending light, as February comes
where once she watched her daughter walk on her shadow and the snowdrops bend
and multiply chill pale bells.
I marry the night where you are a silver ring. I force up through you, new as your touch which fumbles flowers in the pocket of hedge.
I have words for you now you are simply halfling. Unborn, unknowing, your eye is closed but I see mistrust through your eyelid.
Whispering nonsense, you know you spoil my thoughts. You, like a small child, wield your round white eraser and break into crazy song.
I have words for you now you are simply halfling. Uncertain, unspeaking, your eye is closed but I see hope through your eyelid.
You marry the night where I am a silver ring. You force up through me, new as my touch which fumbles flowers in the pocket of hedge.
No cling now, you put your hand in mine, simply as a friend would, a warm favour, small as a keepsake.
We tire of playing roly-poly in the bounces of the bed, but you shift always like spring water, leap to me, a pool you can shock into ripples.
At this midsummer nightfall I would cry through your voice, astonished at a black cap of woods. As the sky turns neatly purple, I feel stillness in my blood, the heave of rolling earth.
We, who work with earth and steel and feel winter frozen in our hands where fields are looms weave the patterns of crops; damp loam flows like silk through shuttling metal.
And our hills, with their wild uncurbable wills may be hard to till but are easy to love, steep work weakens the tractor but strengthens the heart.
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