Under leaves a furry apple of a one-ounce-mouse
sleeps fast in a cup woven with honeysuckle bark.
gaps darned with moss and grass blades.
Before sleep it gorges on rosehips, hawthorn
and blackberries, or hazel nuts, leaving little round holes
in the shells. Before seven months of sleep it must be fat.
With cold growing thicker, its metabolism slows to a tick over
inside its core. The furred tail is a scarf wound across its face,
as it curls itself into the pips of its heartbeat.
Rebecca Gethin lives on Dartmoor in Devon. In 2017 two pamphlets were published: A Sprig of Rowan by Three Drops Press and All the Time in the World by Cinnamon Press who published an earlier collection called A Handful of Water and two novels. She has been a Hawthornden Fellow. In 2018 she jointly won the Coast to Coast Pamphlet competition and has been awarded a writing residency at Brisons Veor. Find more at www.rebeccagethin.wordpress.com.
Foxglove Journal 