The Beautiful Village

          after Sean O’Brien
 
The village where everyone knew everyone’s business:
hens lost to foxes, the heaviest fish escaping
once more under the bridge, the little girl
who died from meningitis and my mother
 
placing snowdrops on her grave
for forty years. Folk clustered like midges
on the corner by the bus stop breathing in
and out chilled air to the rhythm of the river
 
their bent backs silhouetted against the sun
sliding tangerine light behind the pines.
I’d skirt by unnoticed to catch the crack of lives
I knew, but always too young, the newcomer
 
amongst real locals whose fathers worked
the quarries and farms that turned into my hoard
of adventures and freedom. At dusk
like woven threads unravelling
 
they’d slip off round corners through doors
painted green, to suppers ready on the table, nightcaps
by fires. I come back sometimes to hear the river,
see the cottage lamps flick on and off for strangers.
 

Kerry Darbishire

shortlisted in the Wells Festival of Literature competition 2017 and included in competition anthology;
in collection Distance Sweet on my Tongue, 2018, Indigo Dreams Publishing,
ISBN 978-1-910834-89-3