Snowgrip
The snow has come
my car wedged in
its inches of icing
pockmarked with bird tracks
Under blanket and dressing gown
I watch others graft
with shovels
enabling my escape
They scrape away cold scraps
hack at raw earth
I feel friction in the window pane
and through the net
I and my cats assess
the pickings of the day
Above us, countless flakes
breathe in a holding shape
until slowly
they release their brakes
David Van-Cauter is a personal tutor and editor from Hitchin, Herts.In 2017 he was runner-up in the Bradford on Avon festival competition and highly commended in the Bare Fiction competition. He was shortlisted for the last IS&T Cafe Writers Commission.
THE WINTER HERONS OF LOCH SCRIDAIN
DON’T BELIEVE IN GOODWILL TO ALL MEN
OR WOMEN (OR NON-BINARIES OR WHATEVER)
Like deft officials of some secret order working on The Bigger Plan.
As if all will be revealed, but only on the final Boxing Day,
when the loch drains away, seals flop, crabs scuttle, moored boats
drown in the dry; when their majesties stretch out into true form;
when we glimpse, at last, the point of the beaky plot–shout
“Oh God, No!”, look for holes of hope in their mesh, flap like sprats.
Seth Crook loves puffins, has taught philosophy at various universities, rarely leaves Mull. His poems have most recently appeared this autumn in The Rialto, Envoi, The Interpreter’s House, Poetry Scotland, in the Noble Dissent (Beautiful Dragons) and Landfall (Federation of Scottish Writers) anthologies.
battery dead watching the snow
thinking how I was missing out
on a slomo film
three days before
I had found out I could do this
and turned a wave
into a slow waggle of fingers
anyway I tried
to just slow it down with my eyes
Laura McKee has some serious boots for the snow. Her poems can be found in journals including Under the Radar, Prole, The Rialto, Molly Bloom, and Pouch. You can contact her on Twitter: @Estlinin.