Chester’s Ship Gate
This hole in the City Wall was not cast aside
but borne, piece by piece, to the Park,
a stone’s throw away, and re-assembled
as breath held across a path.
Its grainy sandstone frame, braced
against weight of sky, rainbows
an open space that lacks the gate
to separate ship from city.
Scabbed over with slabs, the Wall
is unsettled as all torn places
when mended. Gaps, transplanted
to discreet glades, lace through lives.
They seep memories, mapped by scars,
wince under strangers’ stumblings,
are anointed by their listenings. Spaces
honoured, enfleshed alike by sun and rain.
Julia D McGuinness is a therapeutic Counsellor and Writing for Wellbeing practitioner based in Cheshire. She has just started a Writing Group in a Cancer Care Centre and just finished a Creative Writing MA at MMU with a poetry portfolio themed round Chester’s City Walls. Website:creativeconnectionscheshire.co.uk Twitter: @CreatConneChesh.