There’s a ring of silver birch
behind the fields,
white trunks cauterise the gloaming.
A tight family not yet torn apart,
slender sisters, slim ghosts,
wands of the moon.
I stood among them one night to recite a poem
about a father who met death
with bones like the lightest timber.
As I spoke his name I stood on rough twigs,
discarded for being too brittle
for a bed beneath the earth.
How long had I been standing
above the paw-marked hole,
speaking a language
that those who go below, can’t translate?
We should leave them alone,
walk lightly over them.
They are with their own
keeping warm, flank to flank,
furred or fleshed, invisible,
to us now, and unhearing
as we call their names out
to an audience of empty air.
________________
Anna Saunders has been described as ‘a poet who surely can do anything’ by The North, ‘a modern myth maker’ by Paul Stephenson, and Tears in the Fence said of her ‘Anna Saunders’ poetry is reminiscent of Plath – with all its alpha achievement and radiance’.
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