I followed a drystone wall down the hill in a mist
wind pattering in my ears like a pony
on dry turf and snaking through gorse and reeds.
I caught a moaning, a voice lamenting
on just one note with breathy inhalations,
its instrument a welded gate
played on as though it were an organ pipe.
I pressed my fingers to the holes
and nothing stopped or changed the note,
air finding what it needed for an utterance
of sorrow, the little Os its mouthpiece
calling out from among the silent stones.
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 