family occasion

maybe we’ll all come back as gulls
another time

grey backs against the weather

a commotion of heavy
white wings around whatever troubles us

or feeds us, and an outcry
that never stills

against outsiders
and against our own kind

words
tipped with blood

 

 

 

Judith Taylor comes from Perthshire and is based in Aberdeen, where she works in IT. She is the author of two pamphlet collections, Earthlight (Koo Press, 2006) and Local Colour (Calder Wood Press, 2010) and her poem “Daffodils” was a runner-up in the Cardiff International Poetry Competition 2013.