Reasons by Julia Webb

because you hoofed it down to the river,

kicked up the hot-forged horseshoes of your feet

as you galloped carelessly across the patchy fields.

Because you compared yourself to the widowed swan

who came winter after winter to stake out the field,

and died one spring on the overhead cables.

In the same way that a bulldozer can eat a hole in the earth

or a metal bridge can creak and sway

giving the illusion of falling as you walk across it.

In the same way a city can look like the beginnings of a forest

when you come towards it from far away,

the black trunks of tower blocks crowding together in the middle distance.

__________

Julia Webb is a writer, poetry mentor/tutor and editor, based in Norwich. Her third collection The Telling was published by Nine Arches Press in May 2022. She is steering editor for Lighthouse – a journal for new writers.