Red Fox Winter – Glen Sorestad

 

The red fox treads slowly

in the new-fallen snow,

stops, listens, intent.

 

Its perked ears detect

the scurry of small feet

below the snow crust;

 

the predator visualizes

its prey, now motionless

on its well-trod route.

 

Its leap is pure ballet,

an arching, head-first flash

ending beneath the snow.

 

The vulpine hunter emerges

from a shower of fine snow,

a field mouse in its jaws.

 

---

Glen Sorestad is a Canadian poet whose work has appeared in publication in various parts of the world, has appeared in over 60 anthologies and textbooks, and has been translated into eight languages. He was nominated for Best of the Web 2020. He lives with his wife Sonia in Saskatoon on the northern plains.

January 2, 2024 by foxglovejournal Categories: Poetry, UncategorizedTags: animals, Canada, creative, creativity, creatures, elements, encounter, fox, Glen Sorestad, mouse, movement, nature, place, poem, Poetry, Saskatoon, senses, snow, sound, weather, wildlife, winter, writing Leave a comment

Close calls – Daun Daemon

 

Atop the cucumber trellis,

a red-tailed hawk, hunching

under his uniform’s epaulettes,

reconnoitered the vegetable garden,

            the cottontail grazing outside the fence

            frozen in July’s humid heat.

 

Nearby, a plump predator,

sporting a tuxedo and as richly fed

as a nobleman, conveyed a chipmunk

onto the screened back porch,

            dropped its panting body on the planks,

            plopped down to rest before the feast.

 

Scanning but not seeing, the hawk

            floated away into the trees,

            the rabbit invisible in its stillness.

The cat, too tired to dispatch his catch,

            sighed into a nap in the sun,

            the patient chipmunk motionless.

 

Thawed, the rabbit — ravenous as the hawk —

            began to munch clover flowers

while the chipmunk — bone-weary as the cat —

            quietly skittered away.

 

---

Daun Daemon’s fiction has appeared in Flock, Dead Mule School, Literally Stories, and Delmarva Review among others, and she has published poems in Third Wednesday, Typehouse Literary Review, Remington Review, Deep South Magazine, Into the Void, Peeking Cat Literary, Amsterdam Quarterly, and other journals. Daemon is currently at work on a memoir in poetry as well as short stories inspired by memories of her mother’s home beauty shop. She teaches scientific communication at North Carolina State University and lives in Raleigh with her husband and three cats.

June 4, 2023 by foxglovejournal Categories: Poetry, UncategorizedTags: animals, cat, creative, creativity, creatures, Daun Daemon, encounter, garden, hawk, moment, movement, nature, NC, place, poem, Poetry, rabbit, Raleigh, stillness, sun, trees, US, writing Leave a comment

The Plaque – Kate Whitehead

 

Aileen stands in the upstairs bedroom of the holiday home, sensing subtle traces of him: a faint sharp aroma of old spice, a musky hint of pipe tobacco. Dazzled by the surprise of another day’s sunshine, she peers down at the historical tableau: kids jumping from the high stone harbour walls, catapulting magically through space.

She reaches into the musty wardrobe for a pinstriped dress belted at the waist, pats her close coiled curls and applies the peachy orange lipstick. Strapped into beige high heeled sandals, she navigates the cobbles, steps lightly and confidently down the hill, greeting familiar faces with a casual nod.

If he were here today, she thinks, we would walk together, mad dogs in the noonday sun marvelling in unison at the fantastic summer that reminds us of 1976. In her solo state, this unexpected burst of blue brilliance only accentuates her sense of loss, twisted under the harsh glare.

Her foundation trickles down her right cheek, melting in the brightest sun of the day. She’s tempted to retreat into the cool cavern but doggedly continues her weekly constitutional, climbing the haphazard steps, breathlessly gulping at the still salt air.

Aileen rests for a moment at the top, scowls disapprovingly at the floating detritus, discarded takeaway boxes tangled in the early brambles. Her scowl falls into a small self-congratulatory smile as she admires the deceptively distant elegant grey contours of the holiday home, sandwiched proudly in the middle of the granite.

Huddled at one end of the splintered brown bench with the missing slat, a blonde woman sits clutching a small notebook.

“Sorry, should I move?” she asks, half grimacing, half smiling – Aileen can’t be sure.

“No, there’s more than enough room for the two of us,” Aileen drawls authoritatively.

The blonde woman scours her small trove of uncontroversial chit chat, talks about the weather for the tenth time that morning.

She’s called Alice and she lives in the village all year round, at the top of the hill.

Aileen half listens to Alice mulling over shards of a memory of him.

“Oh, just look at that time, I’m late for lunch!” Aileen exclaims, slicing into Alice’s monologue about autumn in the village.

Standing up dizzily, Aileen turns and notices it, larger, bolder, golder, recently screwed on: the second plaque, below her husband’s.

Aileen trembles, shocked and enraged at the blatant unbelievable audacity of this thing that’s appeared overnight.

She spits the words at Alice. “They can’t do this, not without my permission, this bench is ours, we paid 500 pounds to put the plaque there in his memory because he loved the village so much.

“I need to talk to someone about this, someone who knows I need an explanation.”

“So you own the bench, do you?” Alice mutters indignantly, resentful at being privy to such a morbidly intricate drama.

“Goodbye then, enjoy your day,” Aileen growls, slowly regaining her starchy composure.

Alice observes Aileen’s cautious descent back down the steps and over to the other side of the harbour, paralysed by an overpowering sense of gloom. She raises reluctantly from the bench, her daily dose of calm contaminated by the morbid nature of this revelation…

Aileen sits on a stool in her porch, unstraps her beige high heels, shuts her eyes and imbibes the familiar scent: dusty tomato plants mingled with the spicy cinnamon of her tiny purple orchids.

She can’t decide: will it be lunch first, then the stern phone call to the woman at the chapel, who knows everything, to get to the bottom of the troubling matter of the second plaque?

After a single glass of merlot, suffused with transient drowsy contentment, she wistfully recalls her husband’s easy-going good nature and lets it go, the matter of the second plaque. His words chime in her head, gently mocking.

“Well, what harm can it do, two plaques on the bench? I’m happy to be with the other fellow anyway.”

It’s the end of her solo summer sojourn in the holiday home, drifting through the huge rooms, relieved when the huge sun sinks leaving her shrouded in a comforting twilight blanket. She watches the evening news, tut-tutting at the relentless stupidity of it all, crochets for the grandchildren then slides gratefully under the lavender-scented sheets.

Alice seeks out a new bench for her morning calm the following day, on the other side of the harbour. It is slightly concealed by overhanging branches and next to an overflowing litter bin buzzing with flies. If she twists her head slightly to the right, she can see the golden yellow contours of her own home high up above the harbour. She reaches behind her, runs her hands along with the rough wood, relieved to find it unadorned, seized by an unexpected feeling of gratitude that time hasn’t outsmarted her yet.

 

---

Kate’s Whitehead’s short fiction often has a strong sense of place. She did gain a certificate in creative writing from Birkbeck but ultimately has gained more inspiration form reading widely and voraciously and listening to authors she admires talking about their approach to writing. Her writing has been published in online literary journals, fanzines and the print publications Confluence and Impspired.

January 14, 2023 by foxglovejournal Categories: flash fiction, Prose, UncategorizedTags: bench, creative, creativity, encounter, fiction, flash, harbour, hill, holiday, home, Kate Whitehead, loss, memory, nature, place, plaque, senses, short, story, summer, sun, time, writing Leave a comment

Downtown after the offices let out – John Grey

 

Tall buildings cast overlapping shadows.

It’s night long before nighttime.

Last of the commuters catch their train, their bus.

Garages empty out.

The few inner city dwellers

lock and latch the doors

of their small fortresses.

At street level,

two men approach each other.

It’s dark. Identities are smudged.

Is it? No it can’t be?

Wasn’t he the one who… ?

And didn’t he…?

They nod as they pass –

recognition or just acknowledgment

that there’s no other in this world –

neither gives an indication.

Each hears footsteps

on the concrete sidewalk,

softer and softer,

farther and farther away.

Then all would be silent

if it weren’t for themselves.

But they don’t feel responsible,

just alone.

 

---

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Published in Nebo, Euphony, Columbia Review, Leading Edge, Poetry East and Midwest Quarterly.

January 7, 2023 by foxglovejournal Categories: Poetry, UncategorizedTags: Australia, buildings, city, creative, creativity, darkness, distance, encounter, footsteps, identity, John Grey, leaving, moment, night, poem, Poetry, recognition, shadows, silence, sound, street, US, writing Leave a comment

seals’ dreamtime – Martin Potter

 

readier to roll about

than to drag seal-bulk

shingle-crunch climbing

the beach’s skirts

 

haul and lay their mass

press on the pebble bed

a bay’s broad outscouring

they bask the lull

 

when a pair of helpless eyes

pitch-bright in bristled snout

ratchets round in meeting

yours with sea-thoughts

 

---

Martin Potter (https://martinpotterpoet.home.blog) is a British-Colombian poet and academic, based in Manchester, and his poems have appeared in Acumen, The French Literary Review, Eborakon, Ink Sweat & Tears, The Poetry Village, and other journals. His pamphlet In the Particular was published in 2017.

November 24, 2022 by foxglovejournal Categories: Poetry, UncategorizedTags: animals, bay, beach, creative, creativity, creatures, dream, elements, encounter, eyes, Manchester, Martin Potter, meeting, movement, nature, pebbles, poem, Poetry, roll, sea, seals, UK, writing Leave a comment

Souvenir – Isabel Greenslade

 

I left the car on the cliff top,

went looking for a toilet, found a bird.

There used to be a coal mine under here –

that’s what the guidebook said,

and the mark on the map.

 

It’s long dead, whatever it was,

probably dead when I was at home

looking it up in the bird book.

Fieldfare? Thrush? Which colour plate,

which description did it fit?

Anyway, there it was, trapped in a toilet block

in a car park empty of other visitors.

There were only two of us.

 

This assemblage of stone sand wind and air

progressed up and down the cubicles,

one two three four five five four three two one

its feet scrabbling on the overhead cisterns.

Too far above me to catch, it wouldn’t be wafted

towards the doorway with my map.

 

Already I was trying to name it as it struck

at the skylight that we could both see.

Death was always certain – inside a neglected egg,

by teeth or talon, by being shaken loose.

It didn’t need its name, only the sky which turned solid on it.

 

I flushed and walked out over the stone floor

into the wind, past the laminated pictures of the mine.

I got back into the car, drove to the heritage museum

where miners are trapped on a screen, to be bidden by a button

so someone knows they’re still there.

 

It’s history now, that bird. I thought about it

on the motorway all the way home.

 

---

Isabel is from and of London where she works in a museum. In a former life she was a youth worker then a tour guide. Her poems has been published in Orbis and she can be found discussing poetry, art, gardening urban history, and the natural world on her Instagram account @ijgreenslade.

April 11, 2021 by foxglovejournal Categories: Poetry, UncategorizedTags: bird, creative, creativity, death, doorway, encounter, heritage, history, home, Isabel Greenslade, journey, London, map, memory, mine, poem, Poetry, senses, sky, skylight, sound, UK, writing Leave a comment

A Meeting in Dyrham – lou moon

 

Where I am she will meet me

among the naming of the trees

and the subtle serendipities

I land gently on crows’ laughing feet.

 

Carefully trace the blue rivered breast,

try not to worry about what comes next,

for only time can bloom fruit sweeter,

and where she is I will meet her.

 

Only here, only now could she meet me,

and could we open arms so completely,

that where the branches meet the sky

we could slip away inside and

be calm,

 

for we will meet where we are,

and we will meet where we are.

 

---

lou moon is a vague and formless artist occasionally found reluctantly exploring the spaces between poetry & music, gender & sexuality, bristol & london. Part time artist, full time hippie & a regular at LBGT+ spoken word open mics in London, their work explores the intensity of the interplay between mental health and relationships, spirituality and symbolism, metaphor, vulnerability and queerness in all its forms. @_lou_moon on instagram & twitter

February 14, 2021 by foxglovejournal Categories: Poetry, UncategorizedTags: arms, branches, Bristol, calm, creative, creativity, Dyrham, elements, encounter, fruit, London, lou moon, meeting, naming, nature, poem, Poetry, senses, sky, time, trees, UK, writing Leave a comment

Perfect Surfaces – Geraldine McCarthy

On Saturday morning, Pam cleans the mixing-bowl at the kitchen sink while buns cook in the oven. She’s wearing rubber gloves to protect her nails. Only had them done the previous day, and they’re €30 a pop.

She’s volunteered to bake for a local coffee morning, in aid of some orphanage in South America.

The fairy cakes will take fifteen minutes. Two dozen should be enough; twelve plain and twelve with cherries. She wipes down the already spotless marble worktops, takes out the cakes, and has a quick coffee while they cool on a wire tray. The aroma of vanilla wafts through the kitchen.

Upstairs, she opts for skinny jeans, and a new baby-pink top. Her face is a little flushed from the heat of the oven, so she applies foundation, and then a little eye-shadow and lip gloss. The neighbours are all so glam, with their highlights and lowlights, their clothes always this season’s.

Fairy cakes in boxes on the back seat, Pam drives to the community centre. The Audi glides along like a dream. She’s glad she traded up this year.

Once inside, she makes sure to hand over the baking to Audrey, the head of the committee, who pecks Pam’s cheek and thanks her profusely from a cloud of Chanel No. 5. Audrey persuades Pam to stay for a cuppa, so they sit down in the far corner of the room, away from the hub-bub at other tables. Deep in conversation about the Tidy Towns contest, Pam feels a tap on her shoulder. She twirls on her chair.

Her mother. Grey roots and crumpled cardigan.

Pam’s stomach clenches. “Mam!” she says. “How did you get here?”

“Diane next door brought me,” her mother says, “thought I could do with a break.” She raises an eyebrow. “There’s only so many kitten videos you can watch on YouTube.”

Pam glances at Audrey, who averts her eyes, and nibbles her bun like a bird at a feeder.

Pam addresses her mother. “Oh, well, you know I’d have collected you, but I thought you were watching your weight, that you’d have no interest.”

Her mother twists her wedding band around her finger, as if she’s strangling a turkey. “Hmm.”

“Well, I can drop you back later.”

Her mother purses her lips. “Sure, if I came with Diane I can go home with her.”

Pam feels her face redden. “Well, I’ll call tomorrow morning then. Is there anything you need?”

“Not a bit,” her mother says. “Diane is beckoning me over. See you tomorrow.”

Audrey finishes her bun. “Well, I must mingle. Thanks so much for all your hard work, Pam.”

“Not a bother, Audrey. I’ll see you Monday night for picking up the litter. The group is meeting at the church, isn’t it?”

“Yes, see you then.”

As Pam drives home, she notices the varnish has chipped.  She’ll go to the nail bar next week for a repair job. They look so nice when they’re freshly done.

---

Geraldine McCarthy lives in West Cork, Ireland.  She writes short stories, flash fiction and poetry.  Her work has been published in various journals, both on-line and in print.

September 2, 2020 by foxglovejournal Categories: flash fiction, Prose, UncategorizedTags: appearance, baking, cakes, community, Cork, daughter, encounter, family, fiction, flash, flash fiction, Geraldine McCarthy, Ireland, mother, nails, neighbours, Prose, relationship, short, short story, story, surface, surprise Leave a comment

Sight of a Night Otter – Martin Potter

 

Scrabble on the slipway like

A dog making for the water

Caught too far from the river’s edge

Expecting solitude at that hour

 

The otter observed unhurried once

Back in the element supported

On welling untraceability

Swam away into its comfort

 

 

Martin Potter is a poet and academic, and his poems have appeared in Acumen, The French Literary Review, Eborakon, Scintilla, and other journals. His pamphlet In the Particular was published by Eyewear in December 2017. Read more at https://martinpotterpoet.home.blog.

August 25, 2020 by foxglovejournal Categories: Poetry, UncategorizedTags: animals, comfort, creative, creativity, edge, elements, encounter, Martin Potter, memory, moment, movement, nature, night, otter, poem, Poetry, river, slipway, solitude, UK, water, wildlife, writing Leave a comment

Parental Guidance – Maurice Devitt

 

A hot summer’s day on the estate, tar-lines

softening in the blistering sun. Constructing

triangles with ice-pop sticks, we meld the corners

with our new liquorice glue and whip them

like frisbees from between our fingers,

to watch them ride the warm silent air,

twisting and dipping until they crash and split

like atoms, sticks splayed. I throw one

and it takes off, rising sharply as though from a sling,

then stalls like a cough and bounces off

the windscreen of a cornering car. Sliding

to a stop, the driver jumps out, engine left running.

I am already gone, scooting down the side-passage

of our house. He lopes up the steps, pounds on the door.

No answer at first, just the peripheral view

of a net-curtain settling. He looks up at the windows,

they hold their silence. He shuffles self-consciously

on the step. My mother opens the door, her small frame

standing tall in the doorway, her face suitably sullen.

The man is shouting about what I have done,

while my mother examines the chips in her fingernails.

He demands to see me as if it were his right

to exact some revenge. My mother seems to grow taller

in the darkened hallway, as I appear sheepishly

from beneath her housecoat. He stretches to grab me,

she pushes me back, takes one step forward and explains,

that while she is aware her son is young and reckless,

he does not need to feel this anger to know

that he is wrong. Fear will teach him nothing.

The man harrumphs and walks away. I catch

his last regretful glance from the driver’s seat,

knowing that, for me, this is not over yet.

 

 

Winner of the Trócaire/Poetry Ireland and Poems for Patience competitions, Maurice Devitt has been nominated for Pushcart, Forward and Best of the Net Prizes and been runner-up in the Cúirt New Writing Prize, Interpreter’s House Poetry Competition and the Cork Literary Review Manuscript Competition. He published his debut collection Growing Up in Colour with Doire Press.

July 27, 2020 by foxglovejournal Categories: Poetry, UncategorizedTags: anger, childhood, confrontation, creative, creativity, door, encounter, family, fear, home, Ireland, Maurice Devitt, memory, mistake, mother, parent, past, poem, Poetry, protection, summer, sun, writing Leave a comment

How it was – Elizabeth Gibson

 

There was a storm out there, on the sea of ferns

and small spiders crept in and out of old burns.

Roaming the desert, a dog found the dusk

and in a flower somewhere, red-pink with musk,

a fairy curled up in the arms of a bee.

 

The midges were swirling like water back home

and in the sky, a jellyfish hung all alone.

Under layers of ice, a horse in a hole;

in a meadow of gold and blue starlets, a foal.

Far out beyond grounds of new comets, you saw me.

 

 

Elizabeth Gibson is a writer and performer based in Manchester, UK. She is also the Editor and Photographer for Foxglove Journal. Liz has won a Northern Writers’ Award and been shortlisted for the Poetry Business’ New Poets Prize, and her work has appeared Cake, Cardiff Review, The Compass, Confingo, Litro and Strix among other journals. Liz blogs at http://elizabethgibsonwriter.blogspot.com and you can find her on Twitter and Instagram as @Grizonne.

June 10, 2020June 10, 2020 by foxglovejournal Categories: Poetry, UncategorizedTags: animals, body, change, colours, creative, creativity, elements, Elizabeth Gibson, encounter, home, love, Manchester, memory, movement, mystery, nature, poem, Poetry, senses, time, UK, world, writing Leave a comment

Yellow Ribbons – Pene Morley

 

The newspaper did nothing to stop the cold seeping from the wooden bench into Steve’s bones. He hugged his anorak tighter around his shoulders and tucked his hands under his armpits. Swapping that old blanket for a tin of baked beans had been a bad idea.

Shoppers, muffled up in coats and scarves and hats, trudged to and fro in front of him. Most ignored him, but some watched him out of the tail of an eye as they passed him. He wanted to grab them and tell them, ‘I was like you once, before I went to fight your bloody war’, but he knew they wouldn’t believe him; they never did.

A woman hurled a half-eaten burger into the bin at his elbow, and he eyed it for a moment before snatching it up. Then he noticed the girl staring at him, knock-kneed, gripping a plait in each hand as though she thought her hair was going to fly off.

‘It’s for my dog,’ he said, nodding to where the lurcher was curled up among the carrier bags at his feet.

The dog raised its shaggy head at the sound of his voice, and he tossed the burger between its paws. It snapped it up.

‘What’s his name?’ the girl said, edging closer.

‘I don’t know. I call him Bob but he’s not really my dog; he just follows me around.’

‘Can I stroke him?’

Steve nodded. The girl bounced down on to the ground at his feet with a grin, and the lurcher stretched out his neck to sniff her mouth, his tail thumping the pavement.

‘My dog’s called Scruffy,’ she said, giggling and squirming as Bob licked her face. ‘I got him when my daddy died but nobody can see him; he’s invisible.’

Steve crumpled up the burger bag and chucked it into the bin. Not having a dad must be tough on the kid, but you wouldn’t know it looking at her now. She was holding Bob’s ears up like butterfly wings and chatting to him about everything and nothing. Steve was about to ask her about her dad, when a slip of a woman rushed up and grabbed her by the shoulders.

‘How many times have I told you not to run off like that, Anna?’ she said, pulling the girl on to her feet.

Anna twisted in her grip. ‘I just wanted to see that man; I thought he was daddy.’

The woman’s body slumped, like a puppet no longer in play. She glanced over at Steve, exasperated, and for an instant he thought her tired eyes were pleading with him for help.

Then she tugged at Anna’s arm. ‘Come on, I don’t want you bothering him.’

‘But he’s got a dog,’ Anna said, digging in her heels, ‘and it’s real.’

‘I don’t care.’

‘And he’s got no laces.’

‘What..?’

Her mother stopped pulling her arm and turned to Steve. She studied his cracked, unlaced army boots and then looked back at Anna, frowning.

‘Remember when Daddy’s laces broke and he used my ribbons to tie his trainers,’ Anna said. She smiled at Steve. ‘Would you like my ribbons for your boots?’ She knelt at his feet. ‘I think they’ll look ever so pretty,’ she said, threading her ribbons through the lace holes.

Her mother gazed at Steve as if to say, ‘I’m sorry, about her’. He grinned at her, and she reached down to stroke Bob and hide the flush of colour that had appeared in her cheeks.

 

 

Pene Morley lives in the south of Germany with her husband, teenage son and two Labradors. She discovered very short stories on Twitter over a year ago and now tries daily to do one of the writing prompts. Since then she has also started writing flash fiction and is writing a novel which she hopes to have finished soon. You can follow her on Twitter @PeneMorley.

October 6, 2019 by foxglovejournal Categories: flash fiction, ProseTags: boots, cold, creative, creativity, dog, encounter, eyes, family, feet, fiction, gaze, Germany, humanity, laces, loss, memory, Pene Morley, Prose, ribbons, short, story, war, writing Leave a comment

Foal – Anthony Watts

 

On Thorncombe Hill

I saw the world

 

balanced

upon four saplings

 

itself-begetting

in the dew of the foal’s eyes

 

who whinnying

down nostrils newly bored

 

printed upon that

immemorial quietude

 

his infant sneeze.

 

 

Anthony Watts has been writing ‘seriously’ for about 40 years. He has won 26 First Prizes in poetry competitions and was longlisted for the National Poetry Competition 2014. His poems have appeared in magazines and anthologies, including Poetry Salzburg Review, The Rialto and Riggwelter. His fifth collection, Stiles, is due to be published by Paekakariki Press. His home is in rural Somerset and his main interests are poetry, music, walking and binge thinking – activities which he finds can be happily combined.

September 28, 2019 by foxglovejournal Categories: PoetryTags: Anthony Watts, balance, body, creative, creativity, dew, encounter, eyes, foal, hill, horse, memory, moment, nature, poem, Poetry, senses, sneeze, Somerset, sound, UK, world, writing Leave a comment

Fox – Paul Waring

 

Out on a night

like this

you swagger

aloof

star on stage

under diffused

orange spotlight.

I see you sashay

soft brush tail

lithe limbs

quiet as a whisper

across grass

as I close

my fourth floor window.

You look up

as if you know me

bat-ear surveillance

and dark adapted eyes

aimed like arrows

into mine.

 

 

Paul Waring is a retired clinical psychologist who once designed menswear and was a singer/songwriter in Liverpool bands. He is a 2018 Pushcart Prize nominee whose poems have been published in Foxglove Journal, Prole, Amaryllis, High Window, Atrium, Algebra of Owls, Clear Poetry, Ofi Press, Marble Poetry, The Lampeter Review and others. Find more at https://waringwords.wordpress.com.

January 31, 2019 by foxglovejournal Categories: PoetryTags: animal, creative, creativity, encounter, eyes, fauna, fox, light, moment, movement, nature, night, Paul Waring, poem, Poetry, quiet, senses, stage, star, tail, whisper, window, writing 2 Comments

3:18am – Beth O’Brien

 

3:18am is awake like its own alarm.

 

We bump into each other on the landing

because we are restless at the same time,

for different reasons,

and we jostle for position in the darkness,

 

both of us waiting for the other

to find the light switch.

 

 

Beth O’Brien is currently studying a degree in English Literature at the University of Birmingham. She loves reading, writing, food and seeing the world – when any of these overlap, she loves them even more!

August 21, 2018 by foxglovejournal Categories: PoetryTags: alarm, awake, Beth O'Brien, Birmingham, creative, creativity, darkness, encounter, jostle, landing, light, morning, night, poem, Poetry, position, reasons, restlessness, switch, time, UK, waiting, writing Leave a comment