Travellers
A high price to pay at their journey’s end,
they travelled a long way; he on foot,
she on a mule
and she heavy with child.
All doors were closed against them.
No welcome anywhere.
And the night bitterly cold.
There are others travelling now,
paying a cruel price
for unsafe boats, or crowded lorries;
men, children, women heavy with child.
Many die on the journey.
No welcome anywhere
and the nights bitterly cold.
How they would be glad of a stable,
the warmth of beasts,
the small comfort of straw.
Gill McEvoy is a Hawthornden Fellow. Her second Cinnamon Press collection is Rise ( 2013.) Gill runs many poetry events in Chester where she lives.
Christmas Eve
They had always dressed the tree together—
surrounded by gold-sprayed pine cones
and evergreen wreaths.
Each year, a new ornament, marking
a shared city break or afternoon stroll
around a craft fair.
Tonight, she uncurls her fist, sloughs off
her ring, considers the imprint
that remains.
She swings the ring a moment from her finger-tip,
slides it over a drooping branch.
The fairy, impaled on the tree’s top stem,
stares paint-eyed across the room.
Jinny Fisher was a classical violinist, and is now a psychoanalytic psychotherapist. She lives in Somerset and is a member of Juncture 25 and Wells Fountain Poets. Magazine publications include The Interpreter’s House, Under the Radar, and Prole.