August, Departing
Here’s the stain,
heaved out
and an orchard of clouds
sleeping. The crows flee
warm fugitives
on August’s blunt edge. I see
a distant coldness,
the skirt of the sun shirking.
The tide is loud with the drowned
and the windy chains of gulls.
The air smells of salty bone
and the womb forgetting.
By the rotting light I breathe,
counting the pretty darknesses.
Gillian Prew lives in Scotland and is the author of two recent chapbooks, Disconnections (erbacce-press ) and In the Broken Things (Virgogray Press ). She has twice been short-listed for the erbacce-prize. She likes cats, crows and Dylan Thomas. Her personal website can be found at http://gillianprew.com