Winter afternoon

Charcoal darkness shades late afternoon,
at the narrow edges of a chalk white snowfall.
Beams slide from our single lamp through the pane
onto soft-heaped mounds and frozen branches,
turn what they touch to gold. Butter yellow. Crocus.
Silence curls into the room, a dark-furred cat,
tongue lapping at our pool of light.
We are warm here, tight, close, under the bedclothes
The universe has shrunk, expanded again, to this small star.

 

Aoife Mclellan is a Suffolk writer, who publishes poems and short stories and who is currently engaged in writing plays and a novel. Her writing often focuses on nature, history, Celtic mythology, the Wheel of the Year, the supernatural, and transgressive women. She loves to watch barn owls and to go wild swimming, especially in the sea, which is her natural home. You can find her poetry @poetrywivenhoe.com, Ink, Sweat and Tears ,Offtopic online publications and Littoral press online (pending). She also publishes in different styles under other names.