Narrowing
Fog inhabits the air
so as I walk through cloud shadow
I find another beside me,
her breath condensing on my hair
drawing me into the grey no-light
that sprawls around, ensnaring me
in a long drawn-out dawn
where all I can see lies at the end
of my outstretched hand.
I never held my mother’s hand
with its sparrowy bones,
felt the answering grip –
the veins on her hand blued,
joints swollen, index finger skewed.
If I could, I’d have said,
What I love the most is how, as you get older,
more and more of you comes to the surface.
Rebecca Gethin lives on Dartmoor in Devon. In 2017 two pamphlets were published: A Sprig of Rowan by Three Drops Press and All the Time in the World by Cinnamon Press who published an earlier collection called A Handful of Water and two novels. She has been a Hawthornden Fellow. In 2018 she jointly won the Coast to Coast Pamphlet competition, is reading at Aldeburgh Poetry Festival and has been awarded a writing residency at Brisons Veor. www.rebeccagethin.wordpress.com