Dawn by Erica Hesketh

Last night, winter’s hand

caressed the lawn outside our flat

in the direction of the nap

all night long, leaving it glossed and silver,

a beach at low tide.

Holding hands, we set off

in the still-dark,

the luckiest two people in the whole world,

marvelling at the parallel beams

of red striping the horizon –

like the rings of Saturn,

we said, at the same time.

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Erica Hesketh is a poet and editor, originally from Japan and Denmark, now based in London. Her debut collection In the Lily Room was published by Nine Arches Press in 2025, and her pamphlet To an Unknown Receiver: Sonnets & Cascades is forthcoming with Guillemot Press this summer.

'Dawn' won the Anthropocene Valentine's Day Poetry Contest.