<\/p>\n
Talking about Ladders<\/strong><\/p>\n after Ian Starsmore<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n There is a ladder angled to the roof of the world<\/p>\n where blue darkens<\/p>\n and you cannot hold the footing in your breath for long.<\/p>\n You have a small window<\/p>\n above the Valley of Flowers.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n You feel the odds of risking your neck.<\/p>\n Feel the sugar nut brittle edge of a honey gatherer.<\/p>\n It’s like climbing in high heels<\/p>\n and it’s not only your heels that are high<\/p>\n above the Valley of Flowers.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Because you have a spine<\/p>\n you make one for the mountain.<\/p>\n Each bone a pine rung left for the next person.<\/p>\n A ladder to a larder<\/p>\n of snowflakes and honey;<\/p>\n <\/p>\n a medicine cabinets of gold and flowers.<\/p>\n Leave a winter geocache for the bees<\/p>\n and their small alchemies<\/p>\n like a kind burglary.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Edmund Hilary kept a cloud of bees on a long string,<\/p>\n the settle and shift of black and violet<\/p>\n around his mask<\/p>\n like some matter at basecamp.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Think on those men who climbed out of the orangey<\/p>\n up a ladder with a rabbit’s foot on a stick<\/p>\n to pollenate where mulberries now age.<\/p>\n Think about powdering a cheek in a hothouse.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The mountain holds no wishes<\/p>\n as you hold your hand<\/p>\n to the fear of going home empty handed.<\/p>\n This leaving is like leaving a ladder somewhere<\/p>\n or leaving just enough honey in the hive for next year.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Judith Lal<\/strong> lives in Norwich. Her poems have been published in various magazines including Poetry London, The Rialto <\/em>and The Lighthouse.<\/em> Her pamphlet Flageolets at the Bazaar<\/em> was chosen as a Poetry Book Society recommendation. Her poems also appear in an anthology The Harper Collins Book of English Poetry.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Talking about Ladders after Ian Starsmore There is a ladder angled to the roof of the world where blue darkens and you cannot hold the footing in your breath for long. You have a small window above the Valley of Flowers. You feel the odds of risking your neck. Feel the sugar […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10483","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10483","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10483"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10483\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10486,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10483\/revisions\/10486"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10483"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10483"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10483"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}