Widow
Thunder stumbles,
rain blind as sleet litters the wind,
and behind the door
the dark where silence ticks
and her face grief frail
watching the sky’s tree of stars,
listening to the street’s cobbled skulls
washed bright with laughter.
And there she is-
remembering a moon scented dusk
still warm with gnats’ fog of spores
and slow rain like memory
clearing to the sea,
to a name cut deep and clean
where surf brawls whiten the grey
and a sunset drowns in sobs.
Ian Clarke. Born Wisbech, Cambridgeshire and living in Harrogate, North Yorkshire and published widely in magazines and anthologies. Recent publications include A Slow Stirring from Indigo Dreams Press and BARD 132, a broadsheet in a completely different register available from Atlantean Publishing.